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■e 


^ESSAYS 


BIOGEAPHICAL     AND     CUITICAL 


CHIEFLY   ON 


ENGLISH    POETS 


DAVID  -MASSON,  A.M. 
ii 

PROFESSOR  OF  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  IN   UNIVERSITY  COLLEGE, 


LONDON. 


.IRK. 


UNIYERSfT.y 


RSfT.y  J 


JFC:*Nj^,o- 


1^ 


1  • 


M  A  CM  ILLAN     AND     CO. 

^  1856. 


GENERAL 


(< 


(2. 


PREFATORY   NOTE. 

This  Volume  consists,  for  the  most  part,  of  a  selection 
from  Essays,  on  very  various  topics,  contributed,  during  the 
last  ten  or  twelve  years,  to  Reviews  and  other  periodicals. 
Had  the  selection  been  large  enough  to  represent  the  entire 
series  of  compositions  from  which  it  is  taken,  the  Author 
would  have  preferred  arranging  the  papers  included  in  it 
in  the  exact  order  in  which  tliey  were  written.  The  Essays 
chosen,  however,  having  been  such  as,  from  their  character, 
might  most  aptly  go  together  in  the  same  volume,  it  has 
been  deemed  best  to  arrange  them  in  the  historical  order 
of  the  matters  to  which  they  refer.  After  a  certain  slight 
and  rapid  fashion,  indeed,  the  Essays,  as  they  here  stand, 
will  be  found  to  present  a  series  of  views  of  the  History  of 
English  Literature,  as  illustrated  in  the  lives  and  writings  of 
some  of  its  most  remarkable  men,  from  the  age  of  Elizabeth 
to  our  own  time. 

Allowing  for  an  occasional  verbal  correction,  and  one 
or  two  omissions,  the  Papers,  with  one  exception,  are 
printed  as  they  originally  appeared.  The  exception  is  in 
the  case  of  the  Sketch  of  the  Life  of  Chatterton ;  a  consider- 
able portion  of  which  is  here  published  for  the  first  time. 

h 


VI  PREFACE. 

A  certain  dilfference,  also,  will  be  observed  between  this 
paper  and  tbe  others,  both  as  regards  the  extent  of  space 
allotted  to  it,  and  as  regards  the  manner  of  the  literary  treat- 
ment. In  some  respects,  this  portion  of  the  Volume  departs 
from  the  typical  character  of  the  Essay,  and  approaches  that 
of  a  miniature  Biography. 


University  College,  London, 
April,  1856. 


VIU  CONTENTS. 

VII. 

PAGE 

WORDSWORTH 346 

VIII.  .  , 

SCOTTISH   INPLUKNOB   IN   BRITISH   LITERATURE       ....  391 

IX.  ■  \ 

THEORIES   OF   POETRY 409      ]/^ 

PROSE    AND   VERSE:    DE    QUINCEY .  447    V 


or 


ESSAYS 


lOGRAPHICAL    AND    CRITICAL. 


SHAKESPEAKE    AND    GOETHE.* 

If  there  are  any  two  portraits  whicli  we  all  expect  to  find 
hung  up  in  the  rooms  of  those  whose  tastes  are  regulated  by 
the  highest  literary  culture,  they  are  the  portraits  of  Shake- 
speare and  Goethe.  There  are,  indeed,  many  and  various 
gods  in  our  modern  Pantheon  of  genius.  It  contains  rough 
gods  and  smooth  gods,  gods  of  symmetry  and  gods  of  strength, 
gods  great  and  terrible,  gods  middling  and  respectable,  and 
little  cupids  and  toy-gods.  Out  of  this  variety  each  master 
of  a  household  will  select  his  own  Penates,  the  appropriate 
gods  of  his  own  mantelpiece.  The  roughest  will  find  some  to 
worship  them,  and  the  smallest  shall  not  want  domestic 
adoration.  But  we  suppose  a  dilettante  of  the  first  class ; 
one  who,  besides  excluding  from  his  range  of  choice  the 
deities  of  war,  and  cold  thought,  and  civic  action,  shall 
further  exclude  from  it  all  those  even  of  the  gods  of  modern 
literature  who,  whether  by  reason  of  their  inferior  rank,  or  by 


P*  British  Quarterly  Review  :  November  1852.     l.—ShaJcspeare  and  His 
imes.    By  M.  QvizoT.    1852.     2. — Shakspeare's  Dramatic  Art;  and  his  Rela- 
tion to  Calderon  and  Ooethe.     Translated  from  the  German  of  Dr.  Hermann 
Ulrici.  1846.     3. — Conversations  of  Goethe  with  EcTcermami'  and  Soret.    Trans 
lated  from  the  German  by  Jou^if  OxENFOB.T>.    2  Vols.     1850. 


Z  SHAKESPEARE   AND  GOETHE. 

reason  of  their  peculiar  attributes,  fail  as  models  of  universal 
stateliness.  What  we  should  expect  to  see  over  the  mantel- 
piece of  such  a  rigorous  person  would  be  the  images  of  the 
English  Shakespeare  and  the  German  Goethe.  On  the  one 
side,  we  will  suppose,  fixed  with  due  elegance  against  the 
luxurious  crimson  of  the  wall,  would  be  a  slab  of  black  marble 
exhibiting  in  relief  a  white  plaster-cast  of  the  face  of  Shake- 
speare as  modelled  from  the  Stratford  bust ;  on  the  other,  in  a 
similar  setting,  would  be  a  copy,  if  possible,  of  the  mask  of 
Goethe  taken  at  Weimar  after  the  poet's  death.  This  would 
suffice ;  and  the  considerate  beholder  could  find  no  fault  with 
such  an  arrangement.  It  is  true,  reasons  might  be  assigned 
why  a  third  mask  should  have  been  added — that  of  the  Italian 
Dante ;  in  which  case  Dante  and  Goethe  should  have  occupied 
the  sides,  and  Shakespeare  should  have  been  placed  higher  up 
between.  But  the  master  of  the  house  would  point  out  how, 
in  that  case,  a  fine  taste  would  have  been  pained  by  the  in- 
evitable sense  of  contrast  between  the  genial  mildness  of  the 
two  Teutonic  faces,  and  the  severe  and  scornful  melancholy  of 
the  poet  of  the  Inferno.  The  face  of  the  Italian  poet,  as  being 
so  different  in  kind,  must  either  be  reluctantly  omitted,  he 
would  say,  or  transferred  by  itself  to  the  other  side  of  the 
room.  Unless,  indeed,  with  a  view  to  satisfy  the  claims  both 
of  degree  and  of  kind,  Shakespeare  were  to  be  placed  alone 
over  the  mantelpiece,  and  Dante  and  Goethe  in  company  on 
the  opposite  wall,  where,  there  being  but  two,  the  contrast 
would  be  rather  agreeable  than  otherwise!  On  the  whole, 
however,  and  without  prejudice  to  new  arrangements  in  the 
course  of  future  decorations,  he  is  content  that  it  should  be 
as  it  is. 

And  so,  reader,  for  the  present  are  we.  Let  us  enter  to- 
gether, then,  if  it  seems  worth  while,  the  room  of  this  imagi- 
nary dilettante  during  his  absence  ;  let  us  turn  the  key  in  the 
lock,  so  that  he  may  not  come  in  to  interrupt  us ;  and  let  us 
look  for  a  little  time  at  the  two  masks  he  has  provided  for  us 
over  the  mantelpiece,  receiving  such  reflections  as  they  may 
suggest.  Doubtless  we  have  often  looked  at  the  two  masks 
before ;  but  that  matters  little. 


I 


SHAKESPEARE   AND   GOETHE. 


As  we  gaze  at  the  first  of  the  two  masks,  what  is  it  that  we 
see  ?  A  face  full  in  contour,  of  good  oval  sliape,  the  individual 
features  small  in  proportion  to  the  entire  countenance,  the 
greater  part  of  which  is  made  up  of  an  ample  and  rounded 
forehead,  and  a  somewhat  abundant  moutli  and  chin.  The 
general  impression  is  that  rather  of  rich,  fine,  and  very  mobile 
tissue,  than  of  large  or  decided  bone.  This,  together  with  the 
length  of  the  upper  lip,  and  the  absence  of  any  set  expression, 
imparts  to  the  face  an  air  of  lax  and  luxurious  calmness.  It 
is  clearly  a  passive  face  rather  than  an  active  face ;  a  face 
across  which  moods  may  pass  and  repass,  rather  than  a  face 
grooved  and  charactered  into  any  one  permanent  show  of 
relation  towards  the  outer  world.  Placed  beside  the  mask 
of  Cromwell,  it  would  fail  to  impress,  not  only  as  being  less 
massive  and  energetic,  but  also  as  being  in  every  way  less 
marked  and  determinate.  It  is  the  face,  we  repeat,  of  a  lite- 
rary man ;  one  of  those  faces  which  depend  for  their  power  to 
impress  less  on  the  sculptor's  favourite  circumstance  of  distinct 
osseous  form,  than  on  the  changing  hue  and  aspect  of  the  living 
flesli.  And  yet  it  is,  even  in  form,  quite  a  peculiar  face.  In- 
stead of  being,  as  in  the  ordinary  thousand  and  one  portraits 
of  Shakespeare,  a  mere  general  face  which  anybody  or  nobody 
might  have  had,  the  face  in  the  mask  (and  the  singular  por- 
trait in  the  first  folio  edition  of  the  poet's  works  corroborates 
it)  is  a  face  which  every  call-boy  about  the  Globe  theatre 
must  have  carried  about  with  him  in  his  imagination,  without 
any  trouble,  as  specifically  Mr.  Shakespeare's  face.  In  com- 
plexion, as  we  imagine  it,  it  was  rather  fair  than  dark ;  and 
yet  not  very  fair  either,  if  we  are  to  believe  Shakespeare 
himself — 

"  But  "when  my  glass  shows  me  myself  indeed, 
Beated  and  chopped  with  tanned  antiquity." — Sonnet  62. 

a  passage,  however,  in  which,  from  the  nature  of  the  mood  in 
which  it  was  written,  we  are  to  suppose  exaggeration  for  the 
worse.  In  short,  the  face  of  Shakespeare,  so  far  as  we  can 
infer  what  it  was  from  the  homely  Stratford  bust,  was  a  ge- 
nuine and  even  comely,  but  still  unusual  English  face,  distin- 
guished by  a  kind  of  ripe  intellectual  fulness  in  the  general 

b2 


4  SHAKESPEARE  AND   GOETHE. 

outline,  comparative  smallness  in  the  individual  features,  and 
a  look  of  gentle  and  humane  repose. 

Goethe's  face  is  different.  The  whole  size  of  the  head  is 
perhaps  less,  but  the  proportion  of  the  face  to  the  head  is 
greater,  and  there  is  more  of  that  determinate  form  which 
arises  from  prominence  and  strength  in  the  bony  structure. 
The  features  are  individually  larger,  and  present  in  their  com- 
bination more  of  that  deliberate  beauty  of  outline  which  can 
be  conveyed  with  effect  in  sculpture.  The  expression,  how- 
ever, is  also  that  of  calm  intellectual  repose  ;  and  in  the  absence 
of  harshness  or  undue  concentration  of  the  parts,  one  is  at 
liberty  to  discover  the  proof  that  this  also  was  the  face  of  a  man 
whose  life  was  spent  rather  in  a  career  of  thought  and  literary 
effort  than  in  a  career  of  active  and  laborious  strife.  Yet  the 
face,  with  all  its  power  of  fine  susceptibility,  is  not  so  passive 
as  that  of  Shakespeare.  Its  passiveness  is  more  the  passiveness 
of  self-control,  and  less  that  of  natural  constitution ;  the  sus- 
ceptibilities pass  and  repass  over  a  firmer  basis  of  permanent 
character  ;  the  tremors  among  the  nervous  tissues  do  not  reach 
to  such  depths  of  sheer  nervous  dissolution,  but  sooner  make 
impact  against  the  solid  bone.  The  calm  in  the  one  face  is 
more  that  of  habitual  softness  and  ease  of  humour ;  the  calm 
in  the  other,  more  that  of  dignified,  though  tolerant  self- 
composure.  It  would  have  been  more  easy,  we  think,  to  have 
taken  liberties  with  Shakespeare  in  his  presence,  than  to  have 
attempted  a  similar  thing  in  the  presence  of  Goethe.  The  one 
carried  himself  with  the  air  of  a  man  often  diffident  of  himself, 
and  whom,  therefore,  a  foolish  or  impudent  stranger  might 
very  well  mistake  till  he  saw  him  roused  ;  the  other  wore,  with 
all  his  kindness  and  blandness,  a  fixed  stateliness  of  mien  and 
look  that  would  have  checked  undue  familiarity  from  the  first. 
Add  to  all  this  that  the  face  of  Goethe,  at  least  in  later  life, 
was  browner  and  more  wrinkled  ;  his  hair  more  dark ;  his  eye 
also,  as  we  think,  nearer  the  black  and  lustrous  in  species,  if 
less  mysteriously  vague  and  deep ;  and  his  person  perhaps  the 
taller  and  more  symmetrically  made."^ 

*  According  to  Mr.  Lewes,  in  his  "  Life  of  Goethe,"  it  is  a  mistake  to  fancy 
that  Goethe  was  tall.     He  seemed  taller  than  he  really  was. 


SHAKESPEARE   AND   GOETHE.  5 

But  a  truce  to  these  guesses  !  What  do  we  actually  know 
respecting  these  two  men  whose  masks,  the  preserved  simili- 
tudes of  the  living  features  with  which  thej  once  fronted  the 
world,  are  now  before  us  ?  Let  us  turn  first  to  the  one  and 
then  to  the  other,  till,  as  we  gaze  at  tliese  poor  eyeless  images, 
which  are  all  we  now  have,  some  vision  of  the  lives  and  minds 
they  typify  shall  swim  into  our  ken. 

Shakespeare,  this  Englisliman  who  died  two  hundred  and 
thirty  years  ago,  what  is  he  now  to  us  his  countr3niien,  who 
ought  to  know  him  best?  A  great  name,  in  the  first  place,  of 
which  we  are  proud  !  That  this  little  foggy  island  of  England 
should  have  given  birth  to  such  a  man  is  of  itself  a  moiety  of 
our  acquittance  among  the  nations.  By  Frenchmen,  Shake- 
speare is  accepted  as  at  least  equal  to  their  own  first ;  Italians 
waver  between  him  and  Dante ;  Germans,  by  race  more  our 
brethren,  worship  him  as  their  own  highest  product  too, 
though  born  by  chance  amongst  us.  All  confess  him  to  have 
been  one  of  those  great  spirits,  occasionally  created,  in  whom 
the  human  faculties  seem  to  have  reached  that  extreme  of 
expansion,  on  the  slightest  increase  beyond  which  man  would 
burst  away  into  some  other  mode  of  being,  and  leave  this 
behind.  And  why  all  this?  What  are  the  special  claims  of 
Shakespeare  to  this  high  worship  ?  Through  what  mode  of 
activity,  practised  while  alive,  has  he  won  this  immortality 
after  he  is  dead?  The  answer  is  simple.  He  was  an  artist, 
a  poet,  a  dramatist.  Having,  during  some  five-and-twenty 
years  of  a  life  not  very  long,  written  about  forty  dramatic 
pieces,  which,  after  being  acted  in  several  London  theatres, 
were  printed  either  by  himself  or  by  his  executors,  he  has, 
by  this  means,  bequeathed  to  the  memory  of  the  human  race 
an  immense  number  of  verses,  and  to  its  imagination  a  great 
variety  of  ideal  characters  and  creations — Lears,  Othellos, 
Hamlets,  Falstaffs,  Shallows,  Imogens,  Mirandas,  Ariels, 
Calibans.  This,  understood  in  its  fullest  extent,  is  what 
Shakespeare  has  done.  Whatever  blank  in  human  affairs,  as 
they  now  are,  would  be  produced  by  the  immediate  withdrawal 
of  all  this  intellectual  capital,  together  with  all  the  interest 


b  SHAKESPEARE   AND   GOETHE. 

that  has  been  accumulated  on  it — that  is  the  measure  of  what 
the  world  owes  to  Shakespeare. 

This  conception,  however,  while  it  serves  vaguely  to  indi- 
cate to  us  the  greatness  of  the  man,  assists  us  very  little  in  the 
task  of  defining  his  character.  In  our  attempts  to  do  this,  to 
ascend,  as  it  were,  to  the  living  spring  from  which  have  flowed 
those  rich  poetic  streams,  we  unavoidably  rely  upon  two  kinds 
of  authority — the  records  which  inform  us  of  the  leading  events 
of  his  life ;  and  the  casual  allusions  to  his  person  and  habits 
left  us  by  his  contemporaries.  To  enumerate  the  ascertained 
events  of  Shakespeare's  life  is  surely  unnecessary  here.  How 
he  was  born  at  Stratford-on-Avon,  in  Warwickshire,  in  April, 
1564,  the  son  of  a  respectable  burgess  who  afterwards  became 
poor ;  how,  having  been  educated  with  some  care  in  his  native 
town,  he  married  there,  at  the  age  of  eighteen,  a  farmer's 
daughter  eight  years  older  than  himself;  how,  after  employing 
himself  as  scrivener  or  schoolmaster,  or  something  of  that 
kind,  in  his  native  county  for  a  few  years  more,  he  at  length 
quitted  it  in  his  twenty-fourth  year,  and  came  up  to  London, 
leaving  his  wife  and  three  children  at  Stratford;  how,  con- 
necting himself  with  the  Blackfriars  theatre,  he  commenced 
the  career  of  a  poet  and  play-writer ;  how  he  succeeded  so 
well  in  this,  that,  after  having  been  a  flourishing  actor  and 
theatre-proprietor,  and  a  most  popular  man  of  genius  about 
town  for  some  seventeen  years,  he  was  able  to  leave  the  stage 
while  still  under  forty,  and  return  to  Stratford  with  property 
sufficient  to  make  him  the  most  considerable  man  of  the  place ; 
how  he  lived  here  for  some  twelve  years  more  in  the  midst  of 
his  family,  sending  up  occasionally  a  new  play  to  town,  and 
otherwise  leading  the  even  and  tranquil  existence  of  a  country 
gentlemaix;  and  how,  after  having  buried  his  old  mother, 
married  his  daughters,  and  seen  himself  a  grandfather  at  the 
age  of  forty-three,  he  was  cut  off  rather  suddenly  on  his  fifty- 
third  birthday,  in  the  year  1616 — all  this,  with  a  good  many 
supplementary  details  for  which  we  have  to  thank  Mr.  Collier, 
is,  or  ought  to  be,  as  familiar  to  educated  Englishmen  of  the 
present  day  as  the  letters  of  the  English  alphabet.  M.  Guizot, 
with  a  little  inaccuracy,  has  made  these  leading  facts  in  the 


Vl£ 


SHAKESPEARE   AND   GOETHE. 

of  the  English  poet  tolerably  familiar  even  to  our  French 
neighbours.  But  while  such  facts,  if  conceived  with  sufficient 
distinctness,  serve  to  mark  out  the  life  of  the  poet  in  general 
outline,  it  is  rather  from  the  few  notices  of  him  that  have 
come  down  to  us  from  his  contemporaries  that  we  derive  the 
more  special  impressions  regarding  his  character  and  ways 
with  which  we  are  accustomed  to  fill  up  this  outline.  These 
notices  are  various ;  there  may,  perhaps,  be  about  a  dozen  of 
them  in  all ;  but  the  only  ones  that  take  a  very  decided  hold 
on  the  imagination  are  the  three  following : — 

Fuller's  fancy -'picture  of  Shakespeare  and  Ben  Jonson  at  the  Mermaid 
Tavern. — "  Many  were  the  wit-combats  betwixt  him  and  Ben  Jonaon ;  which 
two  I  behold  like  a  Spanish  great  galleon  and  an  English  man-of-war.  Master 
Jonson,  like  the  former,  was  built  far  higher  in  learning ;  solid,  but  slow  in 
performance.  Shakespeare,  with  the  English  man-of-war,  lesser  in  bulk,  but 
lighter  in  sailing,  could  turn  with  all  tides,  tack  about,  and  take  advantage  of 
all  winds,  by  the  quickness  of  his  wit  and  invention."—  Wi-itten  about  1650,  by 
Thomas  Fuller,  born  in  1608. 

Aubreys  Sketch  of  Shakespeare  at  second  hand. — "  This  William,  being  in- 
clined naturally  to  poetry  and  acting,  came  to  London,  I  guess,  about  18; 
and  was  an  actor  at  one  of  the  play-houses,  and  did  act  exceedingly  well.  (Now 
B.  Jonson  was  never  a  good  actor,  but  an  excellent  instructor.)  He  began 
early  to  make  essays  at  dramatic  poetry,  which  at  that  time  was  very  low ; 
and  his  plays  took  well.  He  was  a  handsome,  well-shaped  man ;  very  good 
company,  and  of  a  very  ready  and  pleasant  smooth  wit.  The  humour  of  the 
constable  in  '  A  Midsummer  Night's  Dream,*  he  happened  to  take  at  Grendon, 
in  Bucks,  which  is  the  road  from  London  to  Stratford ;  and  there  was  living 
that  constable  about  1642,  when  I  first  came  to  Oxon.  Mr.  Jos.  Howe  is  of 
that  parish ;  and  knew  him.     Ben  Jonson  and  he  did  gather  humours  of  men 

daily  wherever  they  came He  was  wont  to  go  to  his  native  country  once 

a  year.  I  think  I  have  been  told  that  he  left  2001.  or  300^.  per  annum,  there 
and  thereabout,  to  a  sister.  I  have  heard  Sir  William  Davenant  and  Mr. 
Thomas  Shadwell,  who  is  accounted  the  best  comedian  we  have  now,  say  that 
he  had  a  most  prodigious  wit,  and  did  admire  his  natural  parts  beyond  all 
other  dramatical  writers.  He  was  wont  to  say  that  he  never  blotted  out  a 
line  in  his  life.  Said  Ben  Jonson  *  I  wish  he  had  a  blotted  out  a  thousand.'  " — 
WHtteji  about  1670,  by  Aubrey,  born  1625. 

Ben  Jonson's  own  Sketch  of  Shakespeare. — "  I  remember  the  players  have 
often  mentioned  it  as  an  honour  to  Shakespeare,  that  in  his  writing  (whatso  - 
ever  he  penned),  he  never  blotted  out  a  line.  My  answer  hath  been,  *  Would 
he  had  blotted  a  thousand  !* ;  which  they  thought  a  malevolent  speech.  I  had 
not  told  posterity  this  but  for  their  ignorance,  who  chose  that  circumstance 
to  commend  their  friend  by,  wherein  he  most  faulted ;  and  to  justify  mine 
own  candour :  for  I  loved  the  man,  and  do  honour  his  memory,  on  this  side 
idolatry,  as  much  as  any.  He  was,  indeed,  honest,  and  of  an  open  and  free 
nature;  had  an  excellent  phantasy,  brave  notions,  and  gentle  expressions, 
wherein  he  flowed  with  that  facility  that  sometimes  it  was  necessary  he  should 
be  stopped :  '  Sufflaminandus  erati  as  Augustus  said  of  Haterius.  His  wit 
was  in  his  own  power ;  would  the  rule  of  it  had  been  so  too  !  Many  times  he 
fell  into  those  things  could  not  escape  laughter;  as  when  he  said,  in  the 
person  of  Caesar,  one  speaking  to  him,  *  Csosar,  thou  dost  me  wrong,'  he 
replied,  *  Caesar  did  never  wrong  but  with  just  cause,'  and  such  like ;  which 
were  ridiculous.  But  he  redeemed  his  vices  with  his  virtues.  There  was  ever 
more  in  him  to  be  praised  than  to  be  pardoned." — Ben  Jonson's  "  Discoveries." 


8  SHAKESPEARE  AND   GOETHE, 

It  is  sheer  nonsense,  with  these  and  other  such  passages 
accessible  to  anybody,  to  go  on  repeating,  as  people  seem 
determined  to  do,  the  hackneyed  saying  of  the  commentator 
Steevens,  that  "  all  that  we  know  of  Shakespeare  is,  that  he 
was  born  at  Stratford -on- Avon ;  married  and  had  children 
there;  went  to  London,  where  he  commenced  actor,  and 
wrote  plays  and  poems ;  returned  to  Stratford,  made  his  will, 
died,  and  was  buried."*  It  is  our  own  fault,  and  not  the 
fault  of  the  materials,  if  we  do  not  know  a  great  deal  more 
about  Shakespeare  than  that ;  if  we  do  not  realize,  for  example, 
these  distinct  and  indubitable  facts  about  him — his  special 
reputation  among  the  critics  of  his  time,  as  a  man  not  so  much 
of  erudition  as  of  prodigious  natural  genius ;  his  gentleness 
and  openness  of  disposition ;  his  popular  and  sociable  habits  ; 
his  extreme  ease,  and,  as  some  thought,  negligence  in  compo- 
sition; and,  above  all,  and  most  characteristic  of  all,  his 
excessive  fluency  in  speech.  "  He  sometimes  required  stop- 
ping," is  Ben  Jonson's  expression;  and  whoever  does  not  see 
a  whole  volume  of  revelation  respecting  Shakespeare  in  that 
single  trait,  has  no  eye  for  seeing  anything.  Let  no  one  ever 
lose  sight  of  that  phrase  in  trying  to  imagine  Shakespeare. 

Still,  after  all,  we  cannot  be  content  thus.  With  regard  to 
such  a  man  we  cannot  rest  satisfied  with  a  mere  picture  of  his 
exterior  in  its  aspect  of  repose,  or  in  a  few  of  its  common 
attitudes.  We  seek,  as  the  phrase  is,  to  penetrate  into  his 
heart — to  detect  and  to  ^:s.  in  everlasting  portraiture  that 
mood  of  his  soul  which  was  ultimate  and  characteristic ;  in 
which,  so  to  speak,  he  came  ready-fashioned  from  the  Creator's 
hands ;  towards  which  he  always  sank  when  alone ;  and  on 
the  ground-melody  of  which  all  his  thoughts  and  actions  were 
but  voluntary  variations.  As  far  short  of  such  a  result  as  would 
be  any  notion  we  could  form  of  the  poet  Burns  from  a  mere 
chronological  outline  of  his  life,  together  with  a  few  stories 

*  This  saying  of  Steevens,  though  still  repeated  in  books,  has  lost  its  force 
with  the  public.  The  Lives  of  Shakespeare  by  Mr.  Halliwell  and  Mr.  Charles 
Knight,  written  on  such  different  principles,  have  effectually  dissipated  the  old 
impression.  Mr.  Knight,  by  his  use  of  the  principle  of  synchronism,  and  his 
accumulation  of  picturesque  details,  in  his  Biography  of  Shakespeare,  has  left 
the  public  without  excuse,  if  they  still  believe  in  Steevens, 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   GOETHE.  9 

such  as  are  current  about  his  moral  irregularities ;  so  far  short 
of  a  true  appreciation  of  Shakespeare  would  be  that  idea  of  him 
which  we  could  derive  from  the  scanty  fund  of  the  external 
evidence. 

And  here  it  is,  that,  in  proceeding  to  make  up  the  deficiency 
of  the  external  evidence  by  going  to  the  only  other  available 
source  of  light  on  the  subject,  namely  the  bequeathed  writings 
of  the  man  himself,  we  find  ourselves  obstructed  at  the  outset 
by  an  obvious  difficulty,  which  does  not  exist  to  the  same 
extent  in  most  other  cases.  We  can,  with  comparative  ease, 
recognise  Burns  himself  in  his  works ;  for  Burns  is  a  lyrist, 
pouring  out  his  own  feelings  in  song,  often  alluding  to  himself, 
and  generally  under  personal  agitation  when  he  writes.  Shake- 
speare, on  the  other  hand,  is  a  dramatist,  whose  function  it 
was  not  to  communicate,  but  to  create.  Had  he  been  a  drama- 
tist of  the  same  school  as  Ben  Jonson,  indeed,  using  the 
drama  as  a  means  of  spreading,  or,  at  all  events,  as  a  medium 
through  which  to  insinuate,  his  opinions ;  and  often  indicating 
his  purposes  by  the  very  names  of  his  dramatis  personce  (as 
Downright,  Merecraft,  Eitherside,  and  the  like) — then  the 
task  would  have  been  easier.  But  it  is  not  so  with  Shake- 
speare. Less  than  almost  any  man  that  ever  wrote,  does  he 
inculcate  or  dogmatise.  He  is  the  very  t3rpe  of  the  poet. 
He  paints,  represents,  creates,  holds  the  mirror  up  to  nature ; 
but  from  opinion,  doctrine,  controversy,  theory,  he  holds 
instinctively  aloof.  In  each  of  his  plays  there  is  a  "  central 
idea,"  to  use  the  favourite  term  of  the  German  critics — that 
is,  a  single  thought  round  which  all  may  be  exhibited  as  con- 
sciously or  unconsciously  crystallized;  but  there  is  no  pervading 
maxim,  no  point  set  forth  to  be  argued  or  proved.  Of  none 
of  all  the  plays  can  it  be  said  that  it  is  more  than  any  other 
a  vehicle  for  fixed  articles  in  the  creed  of  Shakespeare. 

One  quality  or  attribute  of  Shakespeare's  genius,  we  do, 
indeed,  contrive  to  seize  out  of  this  very  difficulty  of  seizing 
anything — that  quality  or  attribute  oi  many-sidedness ^  of  which 
we  have  heard  so  much  for  the  last  century  and  a  half.  The 
immense  variety  of  his  characters  and  conceptions,  embrac- 
ing as  it  does  Hamlets  and  Falstaffs,  Kings  and   Clowns, 


10  SHAKESPEARE  AND   GOETHE. 

Prosperos  and  Dogberrjs,  and  his  apparently  equal  ease  in 
handling  them  all,  are  matters  that  have  been  noted  by  one 
and  all  of  the  critics.  And  thus,  while  his  own]  character  is 
lost  in  his  incessant  shiftings  through  such  a  succession  of 
masks,  we  yet  manage,  as  it  were  in  revenge,  to  extract  from 
the  very  impossibility  of  describing  him  an  adjective  which 
does  possess  a  kind  of  quasi-descriptive  value.  It  is  as  if  of 
some  one  that  had  baffled  all  our  attempts  to  investigate  him, 
we  were  to  console  ourselves  by  saying  that  he  was  a  perfect 
Proteus.  We  call  Shakespeare  "  many-sided ;"  not  a  maga- 
zine, nor  a  lady  at  a  literary  party,  but  tells  you  that ;  and  in 
adding  this  to  our  list  of  adjectives  concerning  him,  we  find  a 
certain  satisfaction,  and  even  an  increase  of  light. 

But  it  would  be  cowardice  to  stop  here.  The  old  sea-god 
Proteus  himself,  despite  his  subtlety  and  versatility,  had  a 
real  form  and  character  of  his  own,  into  which  he  could  be 
compelled,  if  one  only  knew  the  way.  Hear  how  they  served 
this  old  gentleman  in  the  Odyssey. 

"  We  at  once, 
Loud  shouting,  flew  on  him,  and  in  our  arms 
Constrained  him  fast ;  nor  the  sea-prophet  old 
Called  not  incontinent  his  shifts  to  mind. 
First  he  became  a  long-maned  lion  grim ; 
A  dragon  then,  a  panther,  a  huge  boar, 
A  limpid  stream,  and  an  o'ershadowing  tree. 
We,  persevering,  held  him ;  till,  at  length. 
The  subtle  sage,  his  ineffectual  arts 
Resigning  weary,  questioned  me  and  spoke." 

And  so  with  our  Proteus.  The  many-sidedness  of  the  drama- 
tist, let  it  be  well  believed  and  pondered,  is  but  the  versatility 
in  form  of  a  certain  personal  and  substantial  being,  which 
constitutes  the  specific  mind  of  the  dramatist  himself.  Pre- 
cisely as  we  have  insisted  that  Shakespeare's  face,  as  the  best 
portraits  represent  it  to  us,  is  no  mere  general  face  or  face  to 
let,  but  a  good,  decided,  and  even  rather  singular  face ;  so,  we 
would  insist,  he  had  as  specific  a  character,  as  thoroughly  a 
way  of  his  own  in  thinking  about  things  and  going  through 
his  morning  and  evening  hours,  as  any  of  ourselves.  "  Man  is 
only  many-sided,"  says  Goethe,  "when  he  strives  after  the 
highest  because  he  must,  and  descends  to  the  lesser  because  he 


SHAKESPEARE   AND   GOETHE. 

wm;'''  that  is,  as  we  interpret,  when  he  is  borne  on  in  a 
certain  noble  direction  in  all  that  he  does  by  the  very  struc- 
ture of  his  mind,  while,  at  his  option,  he  may  keep  planting 
this  fixed  path  or  not  with  a  sportive  and  flowery  border.  By 
the  necessity  of  his  nature,  Shakespeare  was  compelled  .in  a 
certain  earnest  direction  in  all  that  he  did ;  and  it  is  our  part 
to  search  through  the  thickets  of  imagery  and  gratuitous  fiction 
amid  which  he  spent  his  life,  that  this  path  may  be  discovered. 
As  the  lion,  or  the  limpid  stream,  or  the  overshadowing  tree, 
into  which  Proteus  turned  himself,  was  not  a  real  lion,  or  a 
real  stream,  or  a  real  tree,  but  only  Proteus  as  the  one  or  as 
the  other ;  so,  involved  in  each  of  Shakespeare's  characters, — 
in  Hamlet,  in  Falstafi",  or  in  Eomeo, — involved  in  some  deep 
manner  in  each  of  these  diverse  characters,  is  Shakespeare's 
own  nature.  If  Shakespeare  had  not  been  precisely  and 
wholly  Shakespeare,  and  not  any  other  man  actual  or  con- 
ceivable, could  Hamlet  or  Falstaff,  or  any  other  of  his  crea- 
tions, have  been  what  they  are  ? 

But  h^w^t^  pvnivff  iSl^nV^gpnorp  Cy^yn  l^jg  wprks,  how  to 
compel  this  Proteus  into  his  proper  and  native  form,  is  still 
the  question.  It  is  a  problem  of  the  highest  difficulty.  Some- 
thing, indeed,  of  the  poet's  personal  character  and  views  we 
cannot  help  gathering,  as  we  read  his  dramas.  Passages 
again  and  again  occur  there,  of  which,  from  their  peculiar 
eifect  upon  ourselves,  from  their  conceivable  reference  to  what 
we  know  of  the  poet's  circumstances,  or  from  their  evident 
superfluousness  and  warmth,  we  do  not  hesitate  to  aver, 
"  There  speaks  the  poet's  own  heart."  But  to  show  generally 
how  much  of  the  man  has  passed  into  the  poet,  and  h^w  it.  is 
that  his  personal  bent  and  peculiarities  are  fn  "hp.  anrply  f|p,- 
tected  inhering  in  writinp^s  whose  -essential  character  it  is  to 
be  arbitrary  and  universal,  is  a  task  from  which  a  critic  might 
weir  shrink,  Were  he  left  merely  to  the  ordinary  resources  of 
criticaTin^enuity,  without  any  positive  and  ascertained  oh^(^-- 

In  this  case,  however,  all  the  world  ought  to  know,  there  is 
a  positive  and  ascertained  clue.  Shakespeare  has  left  to  us 
not  merely  a  collection  of  dramas,  the  exercises  of  his  creative 
phantasy  in  a  world  of  ideal  matter,  but  also  certain  poems 


12  SHAKESPEARE  AND  GOETHE. 

which  are  assuredly  and  expressly  autobiographic.  Criticism 
seems  now  pretty  conclusively  to  have  determined,  what  it 
ought   to   have   determined   long   ago,  that   the    Sonnets  of 

Shflk-psppqrp    avpj    nrirl    r^n    png?iV.1j  "hp^    nnfliir>or   pTcp    f^i^Ti    q 

poetical  record  of  his  own  feelings  and  exp^TJf^ri  rr  ■  i  ^n 
nected  series  of  entries,  as  it  were,  in  his  own  diary — during 
a  certain  period  of  his  London  life.  This,  we  say,  is  con- 
clusively determined  and  agreed  upon  ;  and  whoever  does  not, 
to  some  extent,  hold  this  view,  knows  nothing  about  the  sub- 
ject. Ulrici,  who  is  a  genuine  investigator,  as  well  as  a  pro- 
found critic,  is,  of  course,  right  on  this  point.  So,  also,  in  the 
main,  is  M.  Guizot,  although  he  mars  the  worth  of  the  con- 
clusion by  adducing  the  foolish  theory  of  Eujphuism — that  is, 
of  the  adoption  of  an  affected  style  of  expression  in  vogue  in 
Shakespeare's  age — in  order  to  explain  away  that  which  is 
precisely  the  most  important  thing  about  the  sonnets,  and  the 
very  thing  wo^  to  be  explained  away  ;  namely,  the  depth  and 
strangeness  of  their  pervading  sentiment,  and  the  curious 
hyperbolism  of  their  style.  In  truth,  it  is  the  very  closeness 
of  the  contact  into  which  the  right  view  of  the  sonnets  brings 
us  with  Shakespeare,  the  very  value  of  the  information 
respecting  him  to  which  it  opens  the  way,  that  operates 
against  it.  Where  we  have  so  eager  a  desire  to  know,  there 
we  fear  to  believe,  lest  what  we  have  once  cherished  on  so 
gTcat  a  subject  we  should  be  obliged  again  to  give  up ;  or 
lest,  if  our  imaginations  should  dare  to  figure  aught  too  exact 
and  familiar  regarding  the  traits  and  motions  of  so  royal  a 
spirit,  the  question  should  be  put  to  us,  what  we  can  know  of 
the  halls  of  a  palace,  or  the  mantled  tread  of  a  king?  Still 
the  fact  is  as  it  is ;  these  Sonnets  of  Shakespeare  are  auto- 
biographic—  distinctly,  intensely,  painfully  autobiographic, 
although  i^  a  style  and  after  a  fashion  of  autobiography  so 
peculiar,  that  we  can  cite  only  Dante  in  his  Vita  Nuova,  and 
Tennyson  in  his  In  Memoriarrij  as  having  furnished  precisely 
similar  examples  of  it. 

We  are  not  going  to  examine  the  Sonnets  in  detail  here, 
nor  to  tell  the  story  which  they  involve  as  a  whole.  We  will 
indicate  generally,  however,  the^  impres^j nn  whi^l^  we  think, 


SHAKESPEARE  AND  GOETHE.  13 

a   close   investigation  of  them  will-  infallibly  leave  on  any    W- 
thougHtfiil  reader,  as  to  the  characteristic  personal  qualities  of    tt 

that   mind,  the   la^-g^^    »r^(]    innrP   fnptitinna   pmnnnfiona  frnm    €Kj 
which  still  cover  and  astonish  the  world.,  ^/^ 

J,  aJ, 


le  general  and  aggTegate  effect,  then,  of  these  sonnets,  asi  '^ 
contributing  to  our  knowledge  of  Shakespeare  as  a  man,  is  to 
antiquate,  or  at  least  to  reduce  very  much  in  value,  the  com-  1 
mon  idea  of  him  implied  in  such  phrases  as  William  the  . 
Calm,  William  the  Cheerful,  and  the  like.  These  phrases  are  '^ 
true,  when  understood  in  a  certain  very  obvious  sense  ;  but  if 
we  were  to  select  that  designation  which  would,  as  we  think, 
express  Shakespeare  in  his  most  intimate  and  private  rela- 
tions to  man  and  nature,  we  should  rather  say,  William  the 
Meditative,  William  the  Metaphysical,  or  William  the  Melan- 
choly. Let  not  the  reader  who  is  full  of  the  just  idea  of 
Shakespeare's  wonderful  concreteness  as  a  poet,  be  staggered 
by  the  second  of  these  phrases.  The  phrase  is  a  good 
phrase;  etymologically,  it  is  perhaps  the  best  phrase  we 
could  here  use ;  and  whatever  of  inappropriateness  there  may 
seem  to  be  in  it,  proceeds  from  false  associations,  and  will 
vanish,  we  hope,  before  we  have  done  with  it.  Nor  let  it  be 
supposed  that,  in  using,  as  nearly  synonymous,  the  word 
Melancholy,  we  mean  anything  so  absurd  as  that  the  author 
of  Falstaff  was  a  Werther.  W^hat  we  mean  is,  that  there  is 
evidence  in  the  sonnets,  corroborated  by  other  proof  on  all 
hands,  that  the  mind  of  Shakespeare,  when  left  to  itself,  was 
apt  to  sink  into  that  state  in  which  thoughts  of  what  is  sad 
and  mysterious  in  the  universe  most  easily  come  and  go. 

At  no  time,  except  during  sleep,  is  the  mind  of  any  human 
being  completely  idle.  All  men  have  some  natural  and  con- 
genial mood  into  which  they  fall  when  they  are  left  to  talk 
with  themselves.  One  man  recounts  the  follies  of  the  past 
day,  renewing  the  relish  of  them  by  the  recollection  ;  another 
uses  his  leisure  to  hate  his  enemy  and  to  scheme  his  dis- 
comfiture ;  a  third  rehearses  in  imagination,  in  order  to  be 
prepared,  the  part  which  he  is  to  perform  on  the  morrow. 
Now,  at  such  moments,  as  we  believe,  it  was  the  habit  of 
Shakespeare's  mind,  obliged  thereto  by  the  necessity  of  its 


14  SHAKESPEARE  AND   GOETHE. 

structure,  to  ponder  ceaselessly  those  questions  relating  to 
man,  his  origin,  and  his  destiny,  in  familiarity  with  which  con- 
sists what  is  called  the  spiritual  element  in  human  nature.  It 
was  Shakespeare^s  use,  as  it  seems  to  us,  to  revert  often,  when 
alone,  to  that  ultimate  mood  of  the  soul,  in  which  one  hovers 
wistfully  on  the  borders  of  the  finite,  vainly  pressing  against 
the  barriers  that  separate  it  from  the  unknown  ;  that  mood  in 
which  even  what  is  common  and  under  foot  seems  part  of  a 
vast  current  mystery,  and  in  which,  like  Arabian  Job  of 
old,  one  looks  by  turns  at  the  heaven  above,  the  earth  be- 
neath, and  one's  own  moving  body  between,  interrogating 
whence  it  all  is,  why  it  all  is,  and  whither  it  all  tends.  And 
this,  we  say,  is  Melancholy.  It  is  more.  It  is  that  mood  of 
man,  which,  most  of  all  moods,  is  thoroughly,  grandly,  spe- 
cifically human.  That  which  is  the  essence  of  all  worth,  all 
beauty,  all  humour,  all  genius,  is  open  or  secret  reference  to 
the  supernatural ;  and  this  is  sorrow.  The  attitude  of  a 
finite  creature,  contemplating  the  infinite,  can  only  be  that  of 
an  exile — grief  and  wonder  blending  in  a  wistful  longing  for 
an  unknown  home. 

As  we  consider  this  frame  of  mind  to  have  been  charac- 
teristic of  Shakespeare,  so  we  find  that  he  has  not  forgotten 
to  represent  it  as  a  poet.  We  have  always  fancied  Hamlet  to 
be  a  closer  translation  of  Shakespeare's  own  character  than 
any  other  of  his  personations.  The  same  meditativeness, 
the  same  morbid  reference  at  all  times  to  the  supernatural, 
the  same  inordinate  development  of  the  speculative  faculty, 
the  same  intellectual  melancholy,  that  are  seen  in  the  Prince 
of  Denmark,  seem  to  have  distinguished  Shakespeare.  Nor 
is  it  possible  here  to  forget  that  minor  and  lower  form  of  the 
same  fancy — the  ornament  of  As  you  like  it,  the  melancholy 
Jaques. 

"  Jaques.    More,  more,  I  pr'ythee,  more  ! 
Amiens.    It  will  make  you  melancholy,  Monsieur  Jaques. 
Jaques.     I  thank  it.     More,  I  pr'ythee,  more  !     I  can  suck  melancholy  out 
of  a  song,  as  a  weasel  sucks  Qgg^.     More,  I  pr'ythee,  more  ! 
Amiens.     My  voice  is  rugged ;  I  know  1  cannot  please  you. 
Jaques.     I  do  not  desire  you  to  please  me ;  I  desire  you  to  sing. 

*  *  *  *  * 

Rosalind.    They  say  you  a,re  a  melancholy  fellow. 
Jaques.    I  am  so;  I  do  love  it  better. than  laughing. 


SHAKESPEARE  AND  GOETHE.  15 

Rosalind.  Those  that  are  in  extremity  of  ^ither  are  abominable  fellows, 
and  betray  themselves  to  every  modem  censure,  worse  than  drunkards. 

Jaques.     Why,  'tis  good  to  be  sad,  and  say  nothing. 

Rosalind.     Why,  then,  'tis  good  to  be  a  post. 

Jaques.  I  have  neither  the  scholar's  melancholy,  which  is  emulation ;  nor 
the  musician's,  which  is  fantastical ;  nor  the  courtier's,  which  is  proud ;  nor 
the  soldier's,  which  is  ambitious ;  nor  the  la^vyer's,  which  is  politic ;  nor  the 
lady's,  which  is  nice ;  nor  the  lover's,  which  is  all  these  :  but  it  is  a  melancholy 
of  mine  own,  compounded  of  many  simples,  extracted  from  many  objects; 
and,  indeed,  the  sundry  'contemplation  of  my  travels,  in  which  my  often 
rumination  wraps  me,  is  a  most  humorous  sadness." 

Jaques  is  not  Shakespeare ;  but  in  writing  tliis  description 
of  Jaques,  Shakespeare  drew  from  his  knowledge  of  himself. 
His  also  was  a  "  melancholy  of  his  own,"  a  '*  humorous  sad- 
ness in  which  his  often  rumination  wrapt  him."  In  that 
declared  power  of  Jaques  of  ''  sucking  melancholy  out  of  a 
song,'  the  reference  of  Shakespeare  to  himself  seems  almost 
direct.  Nay,  more,  as  Rosalind,  in  rating  poor  Jaques,  tells 
him  on  one  occasion,  that  he  is  so  abject  a  fellow,  that  she 
verily  believes  he  is  *'out  of  love  with  his  nativity,  and 
almost  chides  God^or  making  Mm  of  that  countenance  that  he 
is;'*  so  Shakespeare's  melancholy,  in  one  of  his  sonnets, 
takes  exactly  the  same  form  of  self-dissatisfaction. 

"When,  in  disgrace  with  fortune  and  men's  eyes, 
I  all  alone  beweep  my  outcast  state. 
And  trouble  deaf  Heaven  with  my  bootless  cries. 
And  look  upon  myself,  and  curse  my  fate. 
Wishing  me  like  to  one  more  rich  in  hope. 
Featured  like  him,  like  him  with  friends  possessed. 
Desiring  this  man's  art,  and  that  man's  scope, 
With  what  I  most  enjoy  contented  least; 
Yet,  in  these  thoughts  myself  almost  despising, 
Haply  I  think  on  thee,"  &;c. 

Think  of  that,  reader  !  That  mask  of  Shakespeare's  face, 
which  we  have  been  discussing,  Shakespeare  himself  did  not 
like;  and  there  were  moments  in  which  he  was  so  abject 
as  actually  to  wish  that  he  had  received  from  Nature  another 
man's  physical  features ! 

If  Shakespeare's  melancholy  was,  like  that  of  Jaques,  a 
complex  melancholy — a  melancholy  "  compounded  of  many 
simples,"  extracted  perhaps  at  first  from  some  root  of  bitter 
experience  in  his  own  life,  and  then  fed,  as  his  sonnets  clearly 
state,  by  a  habitual  sense  of  his  own  ^'outcast"  condition  in 
society,  and  by  the  sight  of  a  hundred  social  wrongs  around 


16  SHAKESPEARE   AND   GOETHE. 

him,  into  a  kind  of  abject  dissatisfaction  with  himself  and  his 
fate ;  yet,  in  the  end,  and  in  its  highest  form,  it  was  rather,  as 
we  have  already  hinted,  the  melancholy  of  Hamlet — a  medi- 
tative, contemplative  melancholy,  embracing  human  life  as  a 
whole ;  the  melancholy  of  a  mind  incessantly  tending  from 
the  real  (ra  (jivatKa)  to  the  metaphysical  {ra  fiera  ra  (j)V(nKa)y 
and  only  brought  back  by  external  occasion  from  the  meta- 
physical to  the  real. 

Do  not  let  us  quarrel  about  the  words,  if  we  can  agree 
about  the  thing.  Let  any  competent  person  whatever  read 
the  Sonnets,  and  then,  with  their  impression  on  him,  pass  to 
the  plays,  and  he  will  inevitably  become  aware  of  Shake- 
speare's personal  fondness  for  certain  themes  or  trains  of 
thought,  particularly  that  of  the  speed  and  destructiveness  of 
time.  Death,  vicissitude,  the  march  and  tramp  of  generations 
across  life's  stage,  the  rotting  of  human  bodies  in  the  earth — 
these  and  all  the  other  forms  of  the  same  thought  were 
familiar  to  Shakespeare  to  a  degTce  beyond  what  is  to  be 
seen  in  the  case  of  any  other  poet.  It  seems  to  have  been  a 
habit  of  his  mind,  when  left  to  its  o^vn  tendency,  ever  to 
indulge  by  preference  in  that  oldest  of  human  meditations, 
which  is  not  yet  trite — "  Man  that  is  born  of  a  woman  is  of 
few  days,  and  full  of  trouble ;  he  cometh  forth  as  a  flower, 
and  is  cut  down :  he  fleeth  as  a  shadow,  and  continueth  not." 
Let  us  cite  a  few  examples  from  the  sonnets  : — 

"  When  I  consider  everything  tliat  grows 
Holds  in  perfection  but  a  little  moment ; 
That  this  huge  state  presenteth  nought  but  shows, 
Whereon  the  stars  in  secret  influence  comment." — Sonnet  15. 

"  If  thou  survive  my  well-contented  clay, 
When  that  churl,  Death,  my  bones  with  dust  shall  cover." — Sonnet  32. 

*'  No  longer  mourn  for  me,  when  I  am  dead. 
Than  you  shall  hear  the  surly  sullen  bell 
Give  warning  to  the  world  that  I  am  fled 
From  this  vile  world,  with  viler  worms  to  dwell."— Sonnet  71. 

"  The  wrinkles,  which  thy  glass  will  truly  show, 
Of  mouthed  graves  will  give  thee  memory ; 
Thou,  by  thy  dial's  shady  stealth,  may'st  know 
Time's  thievish  progress  to  eternity." — Sonnet  77. 

"  Or  shall  I  live  your  epitaph  to  make. 
Or  you  survive  when  I  in  earth  am  rotten  ?" — Sonnet  81. 


SHAKESPEARE   AND   GOETHE.  17 

These  are  but  one  or  two  out  of  many  such  passages,  oc- 
curring in  the  sonnets.  Indeed,  it  may  be  said,  that  wherever 
Shakespeare  pronounces  the  words  time,  age,  death,  &c.,  it  is 
with  a  deep  and  cutting  personal  emphasis,  quite  different 
from  the  usual  manner  of  poets  in  their  stereotyped  allusions 
to  mortality.  Time,  in  particular,  seems  to  have  tenanted  his 
imagination  as  a  kind  of  grim  and  hideous  personal  existence, 
cruel  out  of  mere  malevolence  of  nature.  Death,  too,  had 
become  to  him  a  kind  of  actual  being  or  fury,  morally  un- 
amiable,  and  deserving  of  reproach, — *'  that  churl.  Death." 

If  we  turn  to  the  plays  of  Shakespeare,  we  shall  find  that 
in  them,  too,  the  same  morbid  sensitiveness  to  all  associations 
with  mortality  is  continually  breaking  out.  The  vividness, 
for  example,  with  which  Juliet  describes  the  interior  of  a  char- 
nel-house, partakes  of  a  spirit  of  revenge,  as  if  Shakespeare 
were  retaliating,  through  her,  upon  an  object  horrible  to 
himself. 

"  Or  hide  me  nightly  in  a  charnel-house, 
O'ercovered  quite  with  dead  men's  rattling  bones, 
With  reeky  shanks,  and  yellow  chapless  sktills." 

More  distinctly  revengeful  is  Romeo's  ejaculation  at  the 
tomb. 


I 


Thou  detestable  maw,  thou  womb  of  Death, 
Gorged  with  the  dearest  morsel  of  the  earth. 
Thus  I  enforce  thy  rotten  jaws  to  open  ! " 


And  who  does  not  remember  the  famous  passage  in  Measure 
for  Measure  ? — 


I 


**  Claudio.   Death  is  a  fearful  thing. 
Isabella.  And  shamed  life  is  hateful. 
Claudio.   Ay,  but  to  die,  and  go  we  know  not  where — 
To  lie  in  cold  obstruction,  and  to  rot ! 
This  sensible  warm  motion  to  become 
A  kneaded  clod ;  and  the  delighted  spirit 
To  bathe  in  fiery  floods,  or  to  reside 
In  thrilling  regions  of  thick-ribbdd  ice ; 
To  be  imprisoned  in  the  viewless  winds, 
And  blown  with  restless  violence  round  about 
The  pendent  world ;  or  to  be  worse  than  worst 
Of  those  that  lawless  and  uncertain  thoughts 
Imagine  howling  !     'Tis  too  horrible. 
The  weariest  and  most  loathed  worldly  life 
That  age,  ache,  penury,  and  imprisonment. 
Can  lay  on  nature,  is  a  paradise 
To  what  we  fear  of  Death." 
C 


18  SHAKESPEARE   AND  GOETHE. 

Again,  in  the  grave-digging  scene  in  Hamlet,  we  see  the 
same  fascinated  familiarity  of  the  imagination  with  all  that 
pertains  to  churchyards,  coffins,  and  the  corruption  within 
them. 

"  Eamlet.   Pr'ythee,  Horatio,  tell  me  one  thing. 

Horatio.  "What's  that,  my  lord  ? 

Hamlet.   Dost  thou  think  Alexander  looked  o'  this  fashion  i'  the  earth  ? 

Horatio.  E'en  so. 

Hamlet.   And  smelt  so  ?    Pah  !     {Throws  dovm  the  skuU.) 

Horatio.  E'en  so,  my  lord  ! 

Hamlet.  To  what  base  uses  we  may  return,  Horatio  !  Why  may  not 
imagination  trace  the  noble  dust  of  Alexander  till  he  find  it  stopping  a  bung- 
hole  ? 

Horatio.  'Twere  to  reason  too  curiously  to  consider  so. 

Hamlet.  No,  faith,  not  a  jot;  but  to  follow  him  thither  with  modesty 
enough,  and  likelihood  to  lead  it.  As  thus  : — Alexander  died ;  Alexander 
was  buried  ;  Alexander  returned  to  dust ;  the  dust  is  earth ;  of  earth  we  make 
loam ;  and  why  of  that  loam  whereto  he  was  converted  might  we  not  stop  a 
beer-barrel  ? 

Imperial  Caesar,  dead  and  turned  to  clay, 
May  stop  a  hole  to  keep  the  wind  away ; 
O  that  that  flesh  that  kept  the  world  in  awe 
Should  stop  a  hole  to  expel  the  winter's  flaw  ! " 

Observe  how  Shakespeare  here  defends,  through  Hamlet, 
his  own  tendency  ''  too  curiously  "  to  consider  death.  To  sum 
np  all,  however,  let  us  turn  to  that  unparalleled  burst  of  lan- 
guage in  the  Temjpest,  in  which  the  poet  has  defeated  time 
itself  by  chivalrously  proclaiming  to  all  time  what  time 
can  do : — 

"  And,  like  the  baseless  fabric  of  a  vision, 
The  cloud-capped  towers,  the  gorgeous  palaces, 
The  solemn  temples,  the  great  globe  itself — 
Yea,  all  which  it  inherit,  shall  dissolve. 
And,  like  this  unsubstantial  pageant,  faded, 
Leave  not  a  rack  behind.     We  are  such  stuff 
As  dreams  are  made  of;  and  our  little  life 
Is  rounded  with  a  sleep." 

This,  we  contend,  is  no  mere  poetic  phrensy,  inserted  because 
it  was  dramatically  suitable  that  Prospero  should  so  express 
himself  at  that  place ;  it  is  the  explosion  into  words  of  a  feel- 
ing during  which  Prospero  was  forgotten,  and  Shakespeare 
swooned  into  himself.  And  what  is  the  continuation  of  the 
passage  but  a  kind  of  postscript,  describing,  under  the  guise 
of  Prospero,  Shakespeare's  own  agitation  with  what  he  had 
just  written  ? 


SHAKESPEARE   AND  GOETHE.  10 


Sir,  I  am  vexed ; 


Bear  with  my  weakness ;  my  old  brain  is  troubled ; 
Be  not  disturbed  with  my  infirmity. 
If  you  be  pleased,  retire  into  my  cell, 
And  there  repose.    A  turn  or  two  I'll  walk, 
To  still  my  beating  mind." 

'o  our  imagination  the  surmise  is  that  Shakespeare  here  laid 
down  his  pen,  and  began  to  pace  his  chamber,  too  agitated  to 
write  more  that  night 

In  this  extreme  familiarity  with  the  conception  of  mortality 
in  general,  and  perhaps  also  in  this  extreme  sensitiveness  to 
the  thought  of  death  as  a  matter  of  personal  import,  all  great 
poets,  and  possibly  all  great  men  whatever,  have  to  some 
extent  resembled  Shakespeare.  For  these  are  the  feelings  of 
our  common  nature  on  which  religion  and  all  solemn  activity 
have  founded  and  maintained  themselves.  Space  and  Time 
are  the  largest  and  the  outermost  of  all  human  conceptions  ;  to 
stand,  therefore,  incessantly  upon  these  extreme  conceptions, 
as  upon  the  perimeter  of  a  figure,  and  to  view  all  inwards  from 
them,  is  the  highest  exercise  of  thought  to  which  a  human 
being  can  attain.  Accordingly,  in  all  great  poets  there  may 
be  discerned  this  familiarity  of  the  imagination  with  the  world, 
figured  as  a  poor  little  ball  pendent  in  space,  and  moving  for- 
ward out  of  a  dark  past  to  a  future  of  light  or  gloom.  But  in 
this  respect  Shakespeare  exceeds  them  all ;  and  in  this  respect, 
therefore,  no  poet  is  more  religious,  more  spiritual,  more  pro- 
foundly metaphysical  than  he.  Into  an  inordinate  amount  of- 
that  outward  pressure  of  the  soul  against  the  perimeter  of 
sensible  things,  infuse  the  peculiar  moral  germ  of  Christianity, 
and  you  have  the  religion  of  Shakespeare.     Thus  : — 

"  And  our  little  life      ^ 
Is  roimded  with  a  sleep." — Tempest. 

Here  the  poetic  imagination  sweeps  boldly  round  the  universe, 
severing  it  as  by  a  soft  cloud-line  from  the  infinite  Unknown. 

"  Poor  soul  \  the  centre  of  my  sinful  earth, 
Fooled  by  those  rebel  powers  that  lead  thee  'stray  !  "—^owwe*  146, 

Here  the  soul,  retracting  its  thoughts  from  the  far  and  physical, 
dwells  disgustedly  on  itself. 

"  The  dread  of  something  after  death — 
The  undiscovered  coimtry,  from  whose  bourne 
No  traveller  returns." — Hamlet. 

C2 


20  SHAKESPEARE   AND  GOETHE. 

Here  the  soul,  pierced  with  the  new  and  awful  thought  of  sin, 
wings  out  again  towards  the  Infinite,  and  finds  all  dark. 

"  How  would  you  be, 
If  He  whiclL  is  the  top  of  judgment  should 
But  judge  you  as  you  are  ?" — Measure  for  Measv/re. 

Here  the  silver  lamp  of  hope  is  hung  up  within  the  gloomy 
sphere,  to  burn  softly  and  faintly  for  ever ! 

And  so  it  is  throughout  Shakespeare's  writings.  Whatever 
is  special  or  doctrinal  is  avoided ;  all  that  intellectual  tackling, 
so  to  speak,  is  struck  away  that  would  afibrd  the  soul  any 
relief  whatever  from  the  whole  sensation  of  the  supernatural. 
Although  we  cannot,  therefore,  in  honest  keeping  with  popular 
language,  call  Shakespeare,  as  Ulrici  does,  the  most  Christian 
of  poets,  we  believe  him  to  have  been  the  man  in  modern 
times,  who,  breathing  an  atmosphere  full  of  Christian  concep- 
tions, and  walking  amid  a  civilization  studded  with  Chris- 
tian institutions,  had  his  whole  being  tied  by  the  closest 
personal  links  to  those  highest  generalities  of  the  universe 
which  the  greatest  minds  in  all  ages  have  ever  pondered  and 
meditated,  and  round  which  Christianity  has  thrown  its  clasp 
of  gold. 

Shakespeare,  then,  we  hold  to  have  been  essentially  a  medi- 
tative, speculative,  and  even,  in  his  solitary  hours,  an  abject 
and  melancholy  man,  rather  than  a  man  of  active,  firm,  and 
worldly  disposition.  Instead  of  being  a  calm,  stony  observer 
of  life  and  nature,  as  he  has  been  sometimes  represented,  we 
believe  him  to.  have  been  a  man  of  the  gentlest  and  most 
troublesome  affections;  of  sensibility  abnormally  keen  and 
deep ;  full  of  metaphysical  longings ;  liable  above  most  men 
to  self-distrust,  despondency,  and  mental  agitation  from  causes 
internal  and  external ;  and  a  prey  to  many  secret  and  severe 
experiences  which  he  did  not  discuss  at  the  Mermaid  tavern. 
This,  we  say,  is  no  guess  ;  it  is  a  thing  certified  under  his  own 
hand  and  seal.  But  this  being  allowed,  we  are  willing  to 
agree  with  all  that  is  said  of  him,  by  way  of  indicating  the 
immense  variety  of  faculties,  dispositions,  and  acquirements  of 
which  his  character  was  built  up.  Vast  intellectual  inquisi- 
tiveness,  the  readiest  and  most  universal  humour,  the  truest 


J 


SHAKESPEARE   AND   GOETHE.  21 

sagacity  and  knowledge  of  the  world,  the  richest  and  deepest 
capacity  of  enjoying  all  that  life  presented — all  this,  as  applied 
to  Shakespeare,  is  a  mere  string  of  undeniable  commonplaces. 
The  man,  as  we  fancy  him,  who  of  all  others  trod  the  oftenest 
the  extreme  metaphysic  walk  which  bounds  our  universe  in, 
he  was  also  the  man  of  all  others  who  was  related  most  keenly 
by  every  fibre  of  his  being  to  all  the  world  of  the  real  and  the 
concrete.  Better  than  any  man  he  knew  life  to  be  a  dream  ; 
with  as  vivid  a  relish  as  any  man  he  did  his  part  as  one  of 
the  dreamers.  If  at  one  moment  life  stood  before  his  mental 
gaze,  an  illuminated  little  speck  or  disc,  softly  rounded  with 
mysterious  sleep,  the  next  moment  this  mere  span  shot  out 
into  an  illimitable  plain,  whereon  he  himself  stood — a  plain 
covered  with  forests,  parted  by  seas,  studded  with  cities  and 
huge  concourses  of  men,  mapped  out  into  civilizations,  over- 
canopied  by  stars.  Nay,  it  was  precisely  because  he  came  and 
went  with  such  instant  transition  between  the  two  extremes, 
that  he  behaved  so  genially  and  sympathetically  in  the  latter. 
It  was  precisely  because  he  had  done  the  metaphysic  feat  so 
completely  once  for  all,  and  did  not  bungle  on  metaphysicizing 
bit  by  bit  amid  the  real,  that  he  stood  forth  in  the  character  of 
the  most  concrete  of  poets.  Life  is  an  illusion,  a  show,  a 
phantasm ;  well  then,  that  is  settled,  and  I  belong  to  that 
section  of  the  illusion  called  London,  the  seventeenth  century, 
and  woody  Warwickshire !  So  he  may  have  said ;  and  he 
acted  accordingly.  He  walked  amid  the  woods  of  Warwick- 
shire, and  listened  to  the  birds  singing  in  their  leafy  retreats ; 
he  entered  the  Mermaid  tavern  with  Ben  Jonson,  after  the 
theatre  was  over,  and  found  himself  quite  properly  related,  as 
one  item  in  the  illusion,  to  that  other  item  in  it,  a  good  supper 
and  a  cup  of  canary.  He  accepted  the  world  as  it  was ; 
rejoiced  in  its  joys,  was  pained  by  its  sorrows,  reverenced  its 
dignities,  respected  its  laws,  and  laughed  at  its  whimsies.  It 
was  this  very  strength,  and  intimacy,  and  universality  of  his 
relations  to  the  concrete  world  of  nature  and  life,  that  caused 
in  him  that  spirit  of  acquiescence  in  things  as  they  were,  that 
evident  consei-vatism  of  temper,  that  indifference,  or  perhaps 
more,  to  the  specific  contemporary  forms  of  social  and  intellec- 


22  SHAKESPEARE   AND   GOETHE, 

tual  movement  with  which  he  has  sometimes  been  charged  as 
a  fault.  The  habit  of  attaching  weight  to  what  are  called 
abstractions,  of  metaphysicizing  bit  by  bit  amid  the  real,  is 
almost  an  essential  feature  in  the  constitution  of  men  who  are 
remarkable  for  their  faith  in  social  progress.  It  was  precisely, 
therefore,  because  Shakespeare  was  such  a  votary  of  the 
concrete,  because  he  walked  so  firmly  on  the  green  and 
solid  sward  of  that  island  of  life  which  he  knew  to  be  sur- 
rounded by  a  metaphysic  sea,  that  this  or  that  metaphysical 
proposal  with  respect  to  the  island  itself  occupied  him  but 
little. 

How,  then,  did  Shakespeare  relate  himself  to  this  concrete 
world  of  nature  and  life  in  which  his  lot  had  been  cast  ?  What 
precise  function  with  regard  to  it,  if  not  that  of  an  active  par- 
tisan of  progress,  did  he  accept  as  devolving  naturally  on  liimf 
The  answer  is  easy.  Marked  out  by  circumstances,  and  by 
his  own  bent  and  inclination,  from  the  vast  majority  of  men, 
who,  with  greater  or  less  faculty,  sometimes  perhaps  with  the 
greatest,  pass  their  lives  in  silence,  appearing  in  the  world  at 
their  time,  enjoying  it  for  a  season,  and  returning  to  the  earth 
again ;  marked  out  from  among  these,  and  appointed  to  be 
one  of  those  whom  the  whole  earth  should  remember  and 
think  of;  yet  precluded,  as  we  have  seen,  by  his  constitution 
and  fortune,  from  certain  modes  of  attaining  to  this  honour — 
the  special  function  which,  in  this  high  place,  he  saw  himself 
called  upon  to  discharge,  and  by  the  discharge  of  which  he 
has  ensured  his  place  in  perpetuity,  was  simply  that  of  ex- 
pressing  what  he  felt  and  saw.  In  other  words,  Shakespeare 
was  specifically  and  transcendently  a  literary  man.  To  say 
that  he  was  the  greatest  man  that  ever  lived  is  to  provoke 
a  useless  controversy  and  comparisons  that  lead  to  nothing, 
between  Shakespeare  and  Caesar,  Shakespeare  and  Charle- 
magne, Shakespeare  and  Cromwell ;  to  say  that  he  was  the 
greatest  intellect  that  ever  lived,  is  to  bring  the  shades  of 
Aristotle  and  Plato,  and  Bacon  and  Newton,  and  all  the  other 
systematic  thinkers  grumbling  about  us,  with  demands  for  a 
definition  of  intellect,  which  we  are  by  no  means  in  a  position 
to  give ;  nay,  finally,  to  say  that  he  is  the  greatest  poet  that 


SHAKESPEARE   AND   GOETHE.  23 

the  world  has  produced  (a  thing  which  we  would  certainly 
say,  were  we  provoked  to  it,)  would  be  unnecessarily  to  hurt 
the  feelings  of  Homer  and  Sophocles,  Dante  and  Milton. 
What  we  will  say,  then,  and  what  we  will  challenge  the  world 
to  gainsay,  is,  that  he  was  the  greatest  expresser  that  ever 
lived.  This  is  glory  enough,  and  it  leaves  the  other  questions 
open.  Other  men  may  have  led,  on  the  whole,  greater  and 
more  impressive  lives  than  he ;  other  men,  acting  on  their 
fellows  through  the  same  medium  of  speech  that  he  used,  may 
have  expended  a  greater  power  of  thought,  and  achieved  a 
gTeater  intellectual  effect,  in  one  consistent  direction;  other 
men,  too  (though  this  is  very  questionable),  may  have  con- 
trived to  issue  the  matter  which  they  did  address  to  the  world, 
in  more  compact  and  perfect  artistic  shapes.  But  no  man  that 
ever  lived  said  such  splendid  things  on  all  subjects  universally; 
no  man  that  ever  lived  had  the  faculty  of  pouring  out  on  all 
occasions  such  a  flood  of  the  richest  and  deepest  language. 
He  may  have  had  rivals  in  the  art  of  imagining  situations ; 
he  had  no  rival  in  the  power  of  sending  a  gush  of  the  appro- 
priate intellectual  effusion  over  the  image  and  body  of  a  situa- 
tion once  conceived.  From  a  jewelled  ring  on  an  alderman's 
finger  to  the  most  mountainous  thought  or  deed  of  man  or 
demon,  nothing  suggested  itself  that  his  speech  could  not 
envelope  and  enfold  with  ease.  That  excessive  fluency  which 
astonished  Ben  Jonson  when  he  listened  to  Shakespeare  in 
person,  astonishes  the  world  yet.  Abundance,  ease,  redun- 
dance, a  plenitude  of  word,  sound,  and  imagery,  which,  were 
the  intellect  at  work  only  a  little  less  magnificent,  would 
sometimes  end  in  sheer  braggardism  and  bombast,  are  the 
characteristics  of  Shakespeare's  style.  Nothing  is  suppressed, 
nothing  omitted,  nothing  cancelled.  On  and  on  the  poet 
flows ;  words,  thoughts,  and  fancies  crowding  on  him  as  fast 
as  he  can  write,  all  related  to  the  matter  on  hand,  and  all 
poured  forth  together,  to  rise  and  fall  on  the  waves  of  an  esta- 
blished cadence.  Such  lightness  and  ease  in  the  manner,  and 
such  prodigious  wealth  and  depth  in  the  matter,  are  combined 
in  no  other  writer.  How  the  matter  was  first  accumulated, 
what  proportion  of  it  was  the  acquired  capital  of  former  efforts, 


24  SHAKESPEARE   AND  GOETHE. 

and  what  proportion  of  it  welled  up  in  the  poet's  mind  during 
and  in  virtue  of  the  very  act  of  speech,  it  is  impossible  to  say  ; 
but  this  at  least  may  be  affirmed  without  fear  of  contradiction, 
that  there  never  was  a  mind  in  the  world  from  which,  when 
it  was  pricked  by  any  occasion  whatever,  there  poured  forth 
on  the  instant  such  a  stream  of  precious  substance  intellectually 
related  to  it.  By  his  powers  of  expression,  in  fact,  Shake- 
speare has  beggared  all  his  posterity,  and  left  mere  practition- 
ers of  expression  nothing  possible  to  do.  There  is  perhaps 
not  a  thought,  or  feeling,  or  situation,  really  common  and 
generic  to  human  life,  on  which  he  has  not  exercised  his  pre- 
rogative ;  and,  wherever  he  has  once  been,  woe  to  the  man 
that  comes  after  him  !  He  has  overgrown  the  whole  system 
and  face  of  things  like  a  universal  ivy,  which  has  left  no  wall 
uncovered,  no  pinnacle  unclimbed,  no  chink  unpenetrated. 
Since  he  lived,  the  concrete  world  has  worn  a  richer  surface. 
He  found  it  great  and  beautiful,  with  stripes  here  and  there  of 
the  rough  old  coat  seen  through  the  leafy  labours  of  his  prede- 
cessors; he  left  it  clothed  throughout  with  the  wealth  and 
autumnal  luxuriance  of  his  own  unparalleled  language. 

This  brings  us,  by  a  very  natural  connexion,  to  what  we 
have  to  say  of  Goethe.  For,  if,  with  the  foregoing  impressions 
on  our  mind  respecting  the  character  and  the  function  of  the 
great  English  poet,  we  turn  to  the  mask  of  his  German 
successor  and  admirer,  which  has  been  so  long  waiting  our 
notice,  the  first  question  must  infallibly  be,  What  recognition 
is  it  possible  that,  in  such  circumstances,  we  can  have  left  for 
him  f  In  other  words,  the  first  consideration  that  must  be 
taken  into  account  in  any  attempt  to  appreciate  Goethe  is, 
that  he  came  into  a  w^rldjn^jffiliicJi_iil^^ 
before  him.  Jbor  a  man  who,  in  the  main,  was  to  pursue 
a  course  so  similar  to  that  which  Shakespeare  had  pursued, 
this  was  a  matter  of  incalculable  importance.  Either,  on  the 
one  hand,  the  value  of  all  that  the  second  man  could  do,  if  he 
adhered  to  a  course  precisely  similar,  must  sufier  from  the  fact 
that  he  was  following  in  the  footsteps  of  a  predecessor  of  such 
unapproachable  excellence ;  or,  on  the  other  hand,  the  con- 


SHAKESPEARE   AND   GOETHE.  25 

sciousness  of  this,  if  it  came  in  time,  would  be  likely  to  prevent 
too  close  a  resemblance  between  the  lives  of  the  two  men,  by- 
giving  a  special  direction  and  character  to  the  efforts  of  the 
second.     Hear  Goethe  himself  on  this  very  point : — 

"  We  discoursed  upon  English  literature,  on  the  greatness  of  Shakespeare, 
and  on  the  unfavourable  position  held  by  all  English  dramatic  authors  who 
had  appeared  after  that  poetical  giant.  *  A  dramatic  talent  of  any  importance,' 
said  Goethe,  *  could  not  forbear  to  notice  Shakespeare's  works ;  nay,  could  not 
forbear  to  study  them.  Having  studied  them,  he  must  be  aware  that  Shake- 
speare has  already  exhausted  the  whole  of  human  nature  in  all  its  tendencies, 
in  all  its  heights  and  depths,  and  that,  in  fact,  there  remains  for  him,  the 
aftercomer,  nothing  more  to  do.  And  how  could  one  get  courage  to  put  pen 
to  paper,  if  one  were  conscious,  in  an  earnest  appreciating  spirit,  that  such  un- 
fathomable and  unattainable  excellences  were  already  in  existence  ?  It  fared 
better  with  me  fifty  years  ago  in  my  own  dear  Germany.  I  could  soon  come 
to  an  end  with  all  that  then  existed ;  it  could  not  long  awe  me,  or  occupy  my 
attention.  I  soon  left  behind  me  German  literature,  and  the  study  of  it,  and 
turned  my  thoughts  to  life  and  to  production.  So  on  and  on  I  went,  in  my 
own  natural  development,  and  on  and  on  I  fashioned  the  productions  of  epoch 
after  epoch.  And,  at  every  step  of  life  and  development,  my  standard  of 
excellence  was  not  much  higher  than  what  at  such  a  step  I  was  able  to  attain. 
But  had  I  been  bom  an  Englishman,  and  had  all  those  numerous  master- 
pieces been  brought  before  me  in  all  their  power,  at  my  first  dawn  of  youthful, 
consciousness,  they  would  have  overpowered  me,  and  I  should  not  have 
known  what  to  do.  I  could  not  have  gone  on  with  such  fresh  light-hearted- 
ness,  but  should  have  had  to  bethink  myself,  and  look  about  for  a  long  time 
to  find  some  new  outlet.' " — EckermawrCs  Conversations  of  Goethe,  i.  pp.  114, 115. 

All  this  is  very  clear  and  happily  expressed.  Most  English- 
men that  have  written  since  Shakespeare  have  been  overawed 
by  the  sense  of  his  vast  superiority ;  and  Goethe,  if  he  had 
been  an  Englishman,  would  have  partaken  of  the  same  feeling, 
and  would  have  been  obliged,  as  he  says,  to  look  about  for 
some  path  in  which  competition  with  such  a  predecessor  would 
have  been  avoided.  Being,  however,  a  German,  and  coming 
at  a  time  when  German  literature  had  nothing  so  great  to 
boast  of  but  that  an  ardent  young  man  could  hope  to  produce 
something  as  good  or  better,  the  way  was  certainly  open  to 
him  to  the  attainment,  in  his  own  nation,  of  a  position  analog- 
ous to  that  which  Shakespeare  had  occupied  in  his.  Goethe 
might,  if  he  had  chosen,  have  aspired  to  be  the  Shakespeare 
of  Germany.  Had  his  tastes  and  faculties  pointed  in  that 
direction,  there  was  no  reason,  special  to  his  own  nation,  that 
would  have  made  it  very  incumbent  on  him  to  thwart  the 
tendency  of  his  genius  and  seek  about  for  a  new  outlet  in 
order  to  escape  injurious  comparisons.  But,  even  under  such 
circumstances,  to  have  pursued  a  course  very  similar  to  that 


26  SHAKESPEARE  AND  GOETHE. 

of  Shakespeare^  and  to  have  been  animated  by  a  mere  ambi- 
tion to  tread  in  the  footsteps  of  that  master,  would  have  been 
death  to  all  chance  of  a  reputation  among  the  highest.  Great 
writers  do  not  exclusively  belong  to  the  country  of  their  birth ; 
the  greatest  of  all  are  grouped  together  on  a  kind  of  central 
platform,  in  the  view  of  all  peoples  and  tongues ;  and,  as  in 
this  select  assemblage  no  duplicates  are  permitted,  the  man 
who  does  never  so  well  a  second  time  that  which  the  world  has 
already  canonized  a  man  for  doing  once,  has  little  chance  of 
being  admitted  to  coequal  honours.  More  especially,  too,  in 
the  present  case,  would  too  close  a  resemblance  to  the  original, 
whether  in  manner  or  in  purpose,  have  been  regarded  in  the 
end  as  a  reason  for  inferiority  in  place.  As  the  poet  of  one 
branch  of  the  great  Germanic  family  of  mankind,  Shakespeare 
belonged  indirectly  to  the  Germans,  even  before  they  recog- 
nised him ;  in  him  all  the  genuine  qualities  of  Teutonic  human 
nature,  as  well  as  the  more  special  characteristics  of  English 
genius,  were  embodied  once  for  all  in  the  particular  form  which 
had  chanced  to  be  his ;  and  had  Goethe  been,  in  any  marked 
sense,  only  a  repetition  of  the  same  form,  he  might  have  held 
his  place  for  some  time  as  the  wonder  of  Germany,  but,  as 
soon  as  the  course  of  events  had  opened  up  the  communication 
which  was  sure  to  take  place  at  some  time  between  the  German 
and  the  English  literatures,  and  so  made  his  countrymen 
acquainted  with  Shakespeare,  he  would  have  lost  his  extreme 
brilliance,  and  become  but  a  star  of  the  second  magnitude. 
In  order,  then,  that  Goethe  might  hold  permanently  a  first 
rank  even  among  his  own  countrymen,  it  was  necessary  that 
he  should  be  a  man  of  a  genius  quite  distinct  from  that  of 
Shakespeare  ;  a  man  who,  having  or  not  having  certain 
Shakespearian  qualities,  should  at  all  events  signalize  such 
qualities  as  he  had  by  a  marked  character  and  function  of  his 
own.  And  if  this  was  necessary  to  secure  to  Goethe  a  first 
rank  in  the  literature  of  Germany,  much  more  was  it  necessary 
to  ensure  his  place  as  one  of  the  intellectual  potentates  of  the 
whole  modern  world.  If  Goethe  was  to  be  admitted  into  this 
select  company  at  all,  it  could  not  be  as  a  mere  younger 
brother  of  Shakespeare,  but  as  a  man  whom  Shakespeare 


SHAKESPEARE   AND   GOETHE.  27 

himself,  when  he  took  him  by  the  hand,  would  look  at  with 
curiosity,  as  something  new  in  species,  produced  in  the  earth 
since  his  own  time. 

Was  this,  then,  the  case?  Was  Goethe,  with  all  his 
external  resemblance  in  some  respects  to  Shakespeare,  a  man 
of  such  truly  individual  character,  and  of  so  new  and  marked 
a  function,  as  to  deserve  a  place  among  the  highest,  not  in 
German  literature  alone,  but  in  the  literature  of  the  world  as 
a  whole  ?  We  do  not  think  that  any  one  competent  to  give 
an  opinion  will  reply  in  the  negative. 

ST^lance  at  the  external  circumstances  of  G(7f.f:hp■^ct  lifp 
alone  (and  what  a  contrast  there  is  between  the  abundance  of 
biogTaphic  material  respecting  Goethe  and  the  scantiness  of 
our  information  respecting  Shakespeare !)  will  beget  the  im- 
pression that  the  man  who  led  such  a  life  must  have  had 
opportunities  for  developing  a  very  unusual  character.  The 
main  facts  in  the  life  of  Goethe,  as  all  know,  are  these : — that 
he  was  bom  at  Frankfort-on-the-Main,  in  1749,  the  only 
surviving  son  of  parents  who  ranked  among  the  wealthiest  in 
the  town;  that,  having  been  educated  with  extreme  care, 
and  having  received  whatever  experience  could  be  acquired 
by  an  impetuous  student-life,  free  from  all  ordinary  forms  of 
hardship,  first  at  one  German  town  and  then  at  another,  he 
devoted  himself,  in  accordance  with  his  tastes,  to  a  career  of 
literary  activity ;  that,  after  unwinding  himself  from  several 
love-afiiairs,  and  travelling  for  the  sake  of  farther  culture  in 
Italy  and  other  parts  of  Europe,  he  settled  in  early  manhood 
at  Weimar,  as  the  intimate  friend  and  counsellor  of  the 
reigning  duke  of  that  state ;  that  there,  during  a  long  and 
honoured  life,  in  the  course  of  which  he  married  an  inferior 
house-keeper  kind  of  person,  of  whom  we  do  not  hear  much, 
he  prosecuted  his  literary  enterprise  with  unwearied  industry, 
not  only  producing  poems,  novels,  dramas,  essays,  treatises, 
and  criticisms  in  great  profusion  from  his  own  pen,  but  also 
acting,  along  with  Schiller  and  others,  as  a  director  and  guide 
of  the  whole  contemporary  intellectual  movement  of  his  native 
land ;  and  that  finally,  having  outlived  all  his  famous  asso- 
ciates, become  a  widower  and  a  grandfather,  and  attained  the 


28  SHAKESPEARE  AND  GOETHE. 

position  not  only  of  the  acknowledged  king  and  patriarcli  of 
German  literature,  but  also,  as  some  thought,  of  the  wisest 
and  most  serene  intellect  of  Europe,  he  died  so  late  as  1832, 
in  the  eighty-third  year  of  his  age.  All  this,  it  will  be 
observed,  is  very  different  from  the  life  of  the  prosperous 
Warwickshire  player,  whose  existence  had  illustrated  the  early 
part  of  the  seventeenth  century  in  England  ;  and  necessarily 
denoted,  at  the  same  time,  a  very  different  cast  of  mind  and 
temper. 

Accordingly,  such  descriptions  as  we  have  of  Goethe  from 
those  who  knew  him  best  convey  the  idea  of  a  character 
notably  different  from  that  of  the  English  poet.  OiShake^ 
speare  personally  we  have  but  one  uniform  account —that  he 
was  a  man  of  gentle  presence  and  disposition,  very  good 
company,  and  of  such  boundless  fluency  and  intellectual 
inventiveness  in  talk,  that  his  hearers  could  not  always  stand 
it,  but  had  sometimes  to  whistle  him  down  in  his  flights.  In 
Goethe's  case  we  have  two  distinct  pictures.  In  youth,  as  all 
accounts  agree  in  stating,  he  was  one  of  the  most  impetuous, 
bounding,  ennui-dispelling  natures  that  ever  broke  in  upon 
a  society  of  ordinary  mortals  assembled  to  kill  time.  "  He 
came  upon  you,"  said  one  who  knew  him  well  at  this  period, 
"  like  a  wolf  in  the  night."  The  simile  is  a  splendid  one,  and 
it  agrees  wonderfully  with  the  more  subdued  representations 
of  his  early  years  given  by  Goethe  himself  in  his  Autobiography. 
Handsome  as  an  Apollo  and  welcome  everywhere,  he  bore  all 
before  him  wherever  he  went ;  not  only  by  his  talent,  but  also 
by  an  exuberance  of  animal  spirits  which  swept  dulness  itself 
along,  took  away  the  breath  of  those  who  relied  on  sarcasm 
and  their  cool  heads,  inspired  life  and  animation  into  the  whole 
circle,  and  most  especially  delighted  the  ladies.  This  vivacity 
became  even,  at  times,  a  reckless  humour,  prolific  in  all  kinds 
of  mad  freaks  and  extravagances.  Whether  this  impetuosity 
kept  always  within  the  bounds  of  mere  innocent  frolic  is  a 
question  which  we  need  not  here  raise.  Traditions  are 
certainly  afloat  of  terrible  domestic  incidents  connected  with 
Goethe\s  youth,  both  in  Frankfort  and  in  Weimar ;  but  to 
what  extent  these  traditions  are  founded  on  fact  is  a  matter 


SHAKESPEARE   AND  GOETHE.  29 

which  we  have  never  yet  seen  any  attempt  to  decide  upon 
evidence.  More  authentic  for  us,  and  equally  significant,  if 
we  could  be  sure  of  our  ability  to  appreciate-  them  rightly,  are 
the  stories  which  Goethe  himself  tells  of  his  various  youthful 
attachments,  and  the  various  ways  in  which  they  were  con- 
cluded. In  Goethe's  own  narratives  of  these  afiairs,  there  is 
a  confession  of  error,  arising  out  of  his  disposition  passionately 
to  abandon  himself  to  the  feelings  of  the  moment,  without 
looking  forward  to  the  consequences ;  but  whether  this  con- 
fession is  to  be  converted  by  his  critics  into  the  harsher  accu- 
sation of  heartlessness  and  want  of  principle,  is  a  thing  not  to 
be  decided  by  any  general  rule  as  to  the  matter  of  inconstancy, 
but  by  accurate  knowledge  in  each  case  of  the  whole  circum- 
stances of  that  case.  One  thing  these  love-romances  of 
Goethe's  early  life  make  clear— namely,  that  for  a  being  of 
such  extreme  sensibility  as  he  was,  he  had  a  very  strong 
element  of  self-control.  When  he  gave  up  Rica  or  Lilli,  it 
was  with  tears,  and  no  end  of  sleepless  nights ;  and  yet  he  gave 
them  up.  Shakespeare,  we  believe  (and  there  is  an  instance 
exactly  in  point  in  the  story  of  his  sonnets),  had  no  such  power 
of  breaking  clear  from  connexions  which  his  judgment  disap- 
proved. Remorse  and  return,  self-reproaches  for  his  weakness 
at  one  moment,  followed  the  next  by  weakness  more  abject 
than  before — such,  by  his  own  confession,  was  the  conduct,  in 
one  such  case,  of  our  more  passive  and  gentle-hearted  poet. 
Where  Shakespeare  was  "past  cure,"  and  "frantic-mad  with 
evermore  unrest,"  Goethe  but  fell  into  "  hypochondria,"  which 
reason  and  resolution  enabled  him  to  overcome.  Goethe  at 
twenty-five  gave  up  a  young,  beautiful  and  innocent  girl,  from 
the  conviction  that  it  was  better  to  do  so.  Shakespeare  at 
thirty-five  was  the  abject  slave  of  a  dark-complexioned  woman, 
who  was  faithless  to  him,  and  whom  he  cursed  in  his  heart. 
The  sensibilities  in  the  German  poet  moved  from  the  first,  as 
we  have  already  said,  over  a  firmer  basis  of  permanent 
character. 

It  is  chiefly,  however,  the  Goethe  of  later  life  that  the  world 
remembers  and  thinks  of.  The  bounding  impetuosity  is  then 
gone ;  or  rather  it  is  kept  back  and  restrained,  so  as  to  form  a 


30  SHAKESPEARE  AND   GOETHE. 

calm  and  steady  fund  of  internal  energy,  capable  sometimes 
of  a  flash  and  outbreak,  but  generally  revealing  itself  only  in 
labour  and  its  fruits.  What  was  formerly  the  beauty  of  an 
Apollo,  graceful,  light,  and  full  of  motion,  is  now  the  beauty 
of  a  Jupiter,  composed,  stately,  serene.  "  What  a  sublime 
form ! "  says  Eckermann,  describing  his  first  interview  with 
him.  "  I  forgot  to  speak  for  looking  at  him :  I  could  not 
*'  look  enough.  His  face  is  so  powerful  and  brown  !  full  of 
"  wrinkles,  and  each  wrinkle  full  of  expression !  And  every- 
"  where  there  is  such  nobleness  and  firmness,  such  repose  and 
"  greatness !  He  spoke  in  a  slow  composed  manner,  such  as  you 
"  would  expect  from  an  aged  monarch."  Such  is  Goethe,  as 
he  lasts  now  in  the  imagination  of  the  world.  Living  among 
statues  and  books  and  pictures  ;  daily  doing  something  for 
his  own  culture  and  for  that  of  the  world ;  daily  receiving 
guests  and  visitors,  whom  he  entertained  and  instructed  with 
his  wise  and  deep,  yet  charming  and  simple  converse  ;  daily 
corresponding  with  friends  and  strangers,  and  giving  advice 
or  doing  a  good  turn  to  some  young  talent  or  other — never 
was  such  a  mind  consecrated  so  perseveringly  and  exclusively 
to  the  service  of  Kunst  and  Literatur.  One  almost  begins  to 
wonder  if  it  was  altogether  right  that  an  old  man  should  go 
on,  morning  after  morning,  and  evening  after  evening,  in  such 
a  fashion,  talking  about  art  and  science  and  literature,  as  if 
they  were  the  only  interests  in  the  world  ;  taking  his  guests 
into  corners  to  have  quiet  discussions  with  them  on  these 
subjects ;  and  always  finding  something  new  and  nice  to  be 
said  about  them.  Possibly,  indeed,  this  is  the  fault  of  those 
who  have  reported  him,  and  who  only  took  notes  when  the 
discourse  turned  on  what  they  considered  the  proper  Goethean 
themes.  But  that  Goethe  far  outdid  Shakespeare  in  this  con- 
scious dedication  of  himself  to  a  life  of  the  intellect,  we  hold 
to  be  as  certain  as  the  testimony  of  likelihood  can  make  it. 
Shakespeare  did  enjoy  his  art ;  it  was  what,  in  his  pensive 
hours,  as  he  himself  hints,  he  enjoyed. most ;  and  whatever  of 
intellectual  ecstasy  literary  production  can  bring,  must  surely 
have  been  his  in  those  hours  when  he  composed  Hamlet  and 
the  Tempest.     But  Shakespeare's  was  precisely  one  of  those 


SHAKESPEARE   AND  GOETHE.  31 

minds  whose  strength  is  a  revelation  to  themselves  during 
the  moment  of  its  exercise,  rather  than  a  chronic  ascertained 
possession ;  and  from  this  circumstance,  as  well  as  from  the 
attested  fact  of  his  carelessness  as  to  the  fate  of  his  composi- 
tions, we  can  very  well  conceive  that  literature  and  culture 
and  all  that  formed  but  a  small  part  of  the  general  system  of 
things  in  Shakespeare's  daily  thoughts,  and  that  he  would 
have  been  absolutely  ashamed  of  himself  if,  when  anything 
else,  from  the  state  of  the  weather  to  the  quality  of  the  wine, 
was  within  the  circle  of  possible  allusion,  he  had  said  a  word 
about  his  own  plays.  If  he  had  not  Sir  Walter  Scott's 
positive  conviction  that  every  man  ought  to  be  either  a  laird  or 
a  lawyer,  casting  in  authorship  as  a  mere  addition,  if  it  were 
to  be  practised  at  all — he  at  least  led  so  full  and  keen  a  life, 
and  was  drawn  forth  on  so  many  sides  by  nature,  society, 
and  the  unseen,  that  Literature,  out  of  the  actual  moments  in 
which  he  was  engaged  in  it,  must  have  seemed  to  him  a  mere 
bagatelle,  a  mere  fantastic  echo  of  not  a  tithe  of  life.  In  his 
home  in  London,  or  his  retirement  at  Stratford,  he  wrote  on 
and  on,  because  he  could  not  help  doing  so,  and  because  it 
was  his  business  and  his  solace ;  but  no  play  seemed  to  him 
worth  a  day  of  the  contemporary  actions  of  men,  no  descrip- 
tion worth  a  single  glance  at  the  Thames  or  at  the  deer 
feeding  in  the  forest,  no  sonnet  worth  the  tear  it  was  made  to 
embalm.  Literature  was  by  no  means  to  him,  as  it  was  to 
Goethe,  the  main  interest  of  life;  nor  was  he  a  man  so 
far  master  of  himself  as  ever  to  be  able  to  behave  as  if  it  were 
so,  and  to  accept,  as  Goethe  did,  all  that  occurred  as  so  much 
culture.  Yet  Shakespeare  would  have  understood  Goethe; 
and  would  have  regarded  him,  almost  with  envy,  as  one  of 
those  men  who,  as  being  "  lords  and  owners  of  their  faces,"  and 
not  mere  "  stewards,"  know  how  to  husband  Nature's  gifts 
best. 

"  They  that  have  power  to  hurt  and  will  do  none. 
That  do  not  do  the  thing  they  most  do  show, 
Who,  moving  others,  are  themselves  as  stone. 
Unmoved,  cold,  and  to  temptation  slow ; 
They  rightly  do  inherit  Heaven's  graces. 
And  husband  nature's  riches  from  expense  ; 
They  are  the  lords  and  owners  of  their  faces, 
Others  but  stewards  of  their  excellence." — Sonnet  94. 


32  SHAKESPEARE  AND    GOETHE. 

If  Goethe  attained  this  character,  however,  it  was  not  because, 
as  it  is  the  fashion  to  say,  he  was  by  nature  cold,  heartless, 
and  impassive,  but  because,  uniting  will  and  wisdom  to  his 
wealth  of  sensibilities,  he  had  disciplined  himself  into  what 
he  was.  A  heartless  man  does  not  diffuse  geniality  and  kind- 
liness around  him,  as  Goethe  did ;  and  a  statue  is  not  seized, 
as  Goethe  once  was,  with  haemorrhage  in  the  night,  the  result 
of  suppressed  grief. 

That  which  made  Goethe  what  he  was — namely,  his  philo- 
sophy of  life — is  to  be  gathered,  in  the  form  of  hints,  from 
his  various  writings  and  conversations.  We  present  a  few 
important  passages  here,  in  what  seems  th^ir  philosophic  con- 
nexion, as  well  as  the  order  most  suitable  for  bringing  out 
Goethe's  mode  of  thought  in  contrast  with  that  of  Shakespeare. 

Go€the*s  Thoughts  of  Death. — '*  We  had  gone  round  the  thicket,  and  had 
turned  by  Tiefurt  into  the  Weimar  road,  where  we  had  a  view  of  the  setting 
sun.  Goethe  was  for  a  while  lost  in  thought;  he  then  said  to  me,  in  the 
words  of  one  of  the  ancients, 

*  Untergehend  sogar  ist's  immer  dieselbige  Sonne.' 
(Still  it  continues  the  self-same  sun,  even  while  it  is  sinking.) 

•  At  the  age  of  seventy-five,'  continued  he,  with  much  cheerfulness,  '  one  must, 
of  course,  think  sometimes  of  death.  But  this  thought  never  gives  me  the 
least  uneasiness,  for  I  am  fully  convinced  that  our  spirit  is  a  being  of  a  nature 
quite  indestructible,  and  that  its  activity  continues  from  eternity  to  eternity. 
It  is  like  the  sun,  which  seems  to  set  only  to  otir  earthly  eyes,  but  which,  in 
reality,  never  sets,  but  shines  on  unceasingly.' " — EckermanrCs  Conversations  of 
Qoethe,  vol.  i.  p.  1 61. 

Goethe's  maodrn  with  respect  to  Metajphysics. — "  Man  is  bom  not  to  solve  the 
problem  of  the  universe,  but  to  find  out  where  the  problem  begins,  and  then 
to  restrain  himself  within  the  limits  of  the  comprehensible." — Ihid.  vol.  i. 
p.  272. 

Goethe's  theory  of  the  intention  of  the  Supernatural  with  regard  to  the  Visible. — 
"  After  all,  what  does  it  all  come  to  ?  God  did  not  retire  to  rest  after  the 
well-known  six  days  of  creation ;  but,  on  the  contrary,  is  constantly  active  as 
on  the  first.  It  would  have  been  for  Him  a  poor  occupation  to  compose  this 
heavy  world  out  of  simple  elements,  and  to  keep  it  rolling  in  the  sunbeams 
from  year  to  year,  if  He  had  not  had  the  plan  of  founding  a  nursery  for  a 
world  of  spirits  upon  this  material  basis.  So  He  is  now  constantly  active  in 
higher  natures  to  attract  the  lower  ones." — Ibid.  vol.  ii.  p.  426. 

Goethe's  doctrine  of  Immortality. — "  Kant  has  unquestionably  done  the  best 
service,  by  drawing  the  limits  beyond  which  human  intellect  is  not  able  to 
penetrate,  and  leaving  at  rest  the  insoluble  problems.  What  a  deal  have 
people  philosophized  about  immortality  !  and  how  far  have  they  got  ?  I  doubt 
not  of  our  immortality,  for  nature  cannot  dispense  with  the  entdecheia.  But 
we  are  not  all,  in  like  manner,  immortal ;  and  he  who  would  manifest  himself 

in  future  as  a  great  entelecheia  must  be  one  now To  me  the  eternal 

existence  of  my  soul  is  proved  from  my  idea  of  activity.  If  I  work  on  in- 
cessantly till  my  death,  nature  is  bound  to  give  me  another  form  of  existence 
when  the  present  one  can  no  longer  sustain  my  spirit." — Ibid.  vol.  ii.  pp.  193, 
194,  and  p.  122. 


SHAKESPEARE   AND   GOETHE.  33 

Ooefhe' 3  image  of  Life.— '*  Child,  child,  no  more!  The  coursers  of  Time 
lashed,  as  it  were,  by  invisible  spirits,  hurry  on  the  light  car  of  our  destiny ; 
and  all  that  we  can  do  is,  in  cool  self-possession,  to  hold  the  reins  with  a  fii  m 
hand,  and  to  guide  the  wheels,  now  to  the  left,  now  to  the  right,  avoiding  a 
stone  here,  or  a  precipice  there.  Whither  it  is  hurrying,  who  can  tell  ?  and 
who,  indeed,  can  remember  the  point  from  which  it  started  ? ' — Egmont. 

Man's  proper  business. — "  It  has  at  all  times  been  said  and  repeated,  that 
man  should  strive  to  know  himself.  This  is  a  singular  requisition,  with  which 
no  one  complies,  or  indeed  ever  will  comply.  Man  is  by  all  his  senses  and 
efforts  ^directed  to  externals — to  the  world  around  him;  and  he  has  to  know 
this  so  far,  and  to  make  it  so  far  serviceable,  as  he  requires  for  his  own  ends. 
It  is  only  when  he  feels  joy  or  sorrow  that  he  knows  anything  about  himself, 
and  only  by  joy  or  sorrow  is  he  instructed  what  to  seek  and  what  to  shun."-— 
JSckermann's  Conversations  of  Goethe,  vol.  ii.  p.  180. 

The  Abstract  and  the  Concrete,  the  Subjective  and  the  Objective  Tendencies. — 
"  The  Germans  are  certainly  strange  people.  By  their  deep  thoughts  and 
ideas,  which  they  seek  in  everything,  and  fix  upon  everything,  they  make  life 
much  more  burdensome  than  is  necessary.  Only  have  the  courage  to  give 
yourself  up  to  your  impressions;  allow  yourself  to  be  delighted,  moved, 
elevated — nay,  instructed   and    inspired   by  something  great;    but  do   not 

imagine  all  is  vanity,  if  it  is  not  abstract  thought  and  idea It  was  not 

in  my  line,  as  a  poet,  to  strive  to  embody  anything  abstract.  I  received  in  my 
mind  impressions,  and  those  of  a  sensual,  animated,  charming,  varied,  hundred- 
fold kind,  just  as  a  lively  imagination  presented  them ;  and  I  had,  as  a  poet, 
nothing  more  to  do  than  artistically  to  round  oflF  and  elaborate  such  views  and 
impressions,  and  by  means  of  a  Hvely  representation  so  to  bring  them  forward 
that  others  might  receive  the  same  impression  in  hearing  or  reading  my  re- 
presentation of  them A  poet  deserves  not  the  name  while  he  only 

speaks  out  his  few  subjective  feelings ;  but  as  soon  as  he  can  appropriate  to 
himself  and  express  the  world,  he  is  a  poet.  Then  he  is  inexhaustible,  and 
can  be  always  new;  while  a  subjective  nature  has  soon  talked  out  his  little 
internal  material,  and  is  at  last  ruined  by  mannerism.  People  always  talk  of 
the  study  of  the  ancients ;  but  what  does  that  mean,  except  that  it  says, 
*  Turn  your  attention  to  the  real  world,  and  try  to  express  it,  for  that  is  what 
the  ancients  did  when  they  were  alive  ?'  Goethe  arose  and  walked  to  and  fro, 
while  I  remained  seated  at  the  table,  as  he  likes  to  see  me.  He  stood  a 
moment  at  the  stove,  and  then,  like  one  who  has  reflected,  came  to  me,  and, 
with  his  finger  on  his  lips,  said  to  me,  *  I  will  now  tell  you  something  which  you 
will  often  find  confirmed  in  your  own  experience.  All  eras  in  a  state  of 
decline  and  dissolution  are  subjective;  on  the  other  hand,  all  progressive  eras 
have  an  objective  tendency.  Our  present  time  is  retrograde,  for  it  is  subjec- 
tive ;  we  see  this  not  merely  in  poetry,  but  also  in  painting,  and  much  besides. 
Every  healthy  efibrt,  on  the  contrary,  is  directed  from  the  inward  to  the  out- 
ward world,  as  you  will  see  in  all  gi'eat  eras,  which  have  been  really  in  a 
state  of  progression,  and  all  of  an  objective  nature,"' — Ibid.  vol.  i.  pp.  415, 
416,  and  pp.  283,  284. 

Hule  of  Individual  Activity. — "  The  most  reasonable  way  is  for  every  man 
to  follow  his  own  vocation  to  which  he  has  been  born,  and  which  he  has 
learned,  and  to  avoid  hindering  others  fr6m  folloAving  theirs.  Let  the  shoe- 
maker abide  by  his  last,  the  peasant  by  his  plough,  and  let  the  king  know  how 
to  govern ;  for  this  is  also  a  business  which  must  be  learned,  and  with  which 
no  one  should  meddle  who  does  not  understand  it." — I^  id.  vol.  i.  p.  134. 

Eight  and  Wrong :  the  habit  of  Controversy.—  "■  The  '^ad  of  all  opposition  is  ne- 
gation, and  negation  is  nothing.    If  I  call  bad  >id.  ■  hf  t  '       i^aiu  ?    But  if  I  call 

'I  bad,  I  do  a  great  deal  of  mipchief.     He  v'hn  wil'  iright  must  never 

..  must  not  trouble  hii^i^vii^   a  all  abuat   .vhat  is    .     '.ue,  but  only  do  well 

..self,     ^or  the  great  .■•  i^-.  .o,  not  to  pull  down,  out  to  b'  il^  up,  and  in  this 

•  :anity  firds  ou.e.iny."--/6/(i.  vol. '.  p  208. 

loethes  on-. I  F  lation  to  the  Dispi^'ts  of  his  time. — "*\ou  have  been  re- 
:xhed,'  reri^arked  I  r?'  h^r  inconoidorptely,  'for  not  taking  ap  arras  at  that 

■\t  periovl  ^the   war  with   Napolo:-u),   or  at  least  cooperating  as  a  poet. 

B 


34  SHAKESPEARE  AND  GOETHE. 

*  Let  us  leave  that  point  alone,  my  good  friend,'  returned  Goethe.  *  It  is  an 
absurd  world,  whioh  knows  not  what  it  wants,  and  which  one  must  allow  to 
have  its  own  way.  How  could  I  take  up  arms  without  hatred,  and  how  could 
I  hate  without  youth  ?  If  such  an  emergency  had  befallen  me  when  twenty 
years  old,  I  should  certainly  not  have  been  the  last ;  but  it  found  me  as  one 
who  had  already  passed  the  first  sixties.  Besides,  we  cannot  all  serve  our 
country  in  the  same  way,  but  each  does  his  best,  according  as  God  has  endowed 
him.  I  have  toiled  hard  enough  during  half  a  century.  I  can  say  that,  in 
those  things  which  nature  has  appointed  for  my  daily  work,  I  have  permitted 
myself  no  relaxation  night  or  day,  but  have  always  striven,  investigated,  and 
done  as  much,  and  that  as  well,  as  I  coxild.     If  every  one  can  say  the  same  of 

himself,  it  will  prove  well  with  all I  will  not  say  what  I  think.     There 

is  more  ill-will  towards  me,  hidden  beneath  that  remark,  than  you  ai-e  aware 
of.  I  feel  therein  a  new  form  of  the  aid  hatred  with  which  people  have  per- 
secuted me,  and  endeavoured  quietly  to  wound  me  for  years.  I  know  very 
well  that  I  am  an  eyesore  to  many ;  that  they  would  all  willingly  get  rid  of 
me;  and  that,  since  they  cannot  touch  my  talent,  they  aim  at  my  character. 
Now,  it  is  said  that  I  am  proud;  now,  egotistical;  now,  immersed  in  sen- 
suality; now,  without  Christianity;  and  now,  without  love  for  my  native 
country,  and  my  own  dear  Germans.     You  have  now  known  me  sufficiently 

for  years,  and  you  feel  what  all  that  talk  is  worth The  poet,  as  a  man 

and  citizen,  will  love  his  native  land ;  but  the  native  land  of  his  poetic  powers 
and  poetic  action  is  the  good,  noble,  and  beautiful,  which  is  confined  to  no 
particular  province  or  country,  and  which  he  seizes  upon  and  forms,  wher- 
ever he  finds  them.  Therein  he  is  like  the  eagle,  who  hovers  with  free  gaze 
over  whole  countries,  and  to  whom  it  is  of  no  consequence  whether  the  hare 
on  which  he  pounces  is  running  in  Prussia  or  in  Saxony.' " — Ibid.  vol.  ii, 
pp.  257,  258,  and  p.  427. 

Whoever  has  read  these  sentences  attentively,  and  pene- 
trated their  meaning  in  connexion,  will  see  that  they  reveal 
a  mode  of  thought  somewhat  resembling  that  which  we  have 
attributed  to  Shakespeare,  and  yet  essentially  different  from  it. 
Both  poets  are  distinguished  by  this,  that  they  abstained 
systematically  during  their  lives  from  the  abstract,  the  dialec- 
tical and  the  controversial,  and  devoted  themselves,  with  true 
feeling  and  enjoyment,  to  the  concrete,  the  real  and  the 
unquestioned;  and  so  far  there  is  an  obvious  resemblance 
between  them.  But  the  manner  in  which  this  characteristic 
was  attained,  was  by  no  means  the  same  in  both  cases.  In 
Shakespeare,  as  we  have  seen,  there  was  a  metaphysic  longing, 
a  tendency  towards  the  supersensible  and  invisible,  absolutely 
morbid,  if  we  take  ordinary  constitutions  as  the  standard  of 
health  in  this  respect ;  and  if,  with  all  this,  he  revelled  with 
delight  and  moved  with  ease  and  firmness  in  the  sensuous 
and  actual,  it  was  because  the  very  same  soul  which  pressed 
with  such  energy  and  wailing  against  the  bounds  of  this  life 
of  man,  was  also  related  with  inordinate  keenness  and  intimacy 
to  all  that  this  life  spheres  in.  In  Goethe,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  tendency  to  the  real  existed  under  easier  constitutional 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   GOETHE.  35 

conditions,  and  in  a  state  of  such  natural  preponderance  over 
any  concomitant  craving  for  the  metaphysical,  that  it  neces- 
sarily took,  German  as  he  was,  a  higher  place  in  his  estimate 
of  what  is  desirable  in  a  human  character.  That  world  of  the 
real  in  which  Shakespeare  delighted,  and  which  he  knew  so 
well,  seemed  to  him,  all  this  knowledge  and  delight  notwith- 
standing, far  more  evanescent,  far  more  a  mere  filmy  show, 
far  less  considerable  a  shred  of  all  that  is,  than  it  did  to 
Goethe.  To  Shakespeare,  as  we  have  already  said,  life  was 
but  as  a  little  island  on  the  bosom  of  a  boundless  sea :  men 
must  needs  know  what  the  island  contains,  and  act  as  those 
who  have  to  till  and  rule  it ;  still,  with  that  expanse  of  waters 
all  round  in  view,  and  that  roar  of  waters  ever  in  the  ear, 
what  can  men  call  themselves  or  pretend  their  realm  to  be  ? 
*'  Poor  fools  of  nature,"  is  the  poet's  own  phrase — the  realm 
so  small  that  it  is  pitiful  to  belong  to  it !  Not  so  with  Goethe. 
To  him  also,  of  course,  the  thought  was  familiar  of  a  vast 
region  of  the  supersensible  outlying  nature  and  life ;  but  a 
higher  value  on  the  whole  was  reserved  for  nature  and  life, 
even  on  the  universal  scale,  by  his  peculiar  habit  of  conceiving 
them,  not  as  distinct  from  the  supersensible,  and  contempo- 
raneously begirt  by  it,  but  rather,  if  we  may  so  speak,  as  a 
considerable  portion,  or  even  duration,  of  the  quondam-suiper- 
sensible  in  the  new  form  of  the  sensible.  In  other  words, 
Goethe  was  full  of  the  notion  of  progress  or  evolution ;  the 
world  was  to  him  not  a  mere  spectacle  and  dominion  for  the 
supernatural,  but  an  actual  manifestation  of  the  substance  of 
the  supernatural  itself,  on  its  way  through  time  to  new  issues. 
Hence  his  peculiar  notion  of  immortality  ;  hence  his  view  as 
to  the  mere  relativeness  of  the  terms  right  and  wrong,  good 
and  bad,  and  the  like ;  and  hence  also  his  resolute  inculcation 
of  the  doctrine,  so  unpalatable  to  his  countrymen,  that  men 
ought  to  direct  their  thoughts  and  efforts  to  the  actual  and  the 
outward.  Life  being  the  current  phase  of  the  universal 
mystery,  the  true  duty  of  men  could  be  but  to  contribute  in 
their  various  ways  to  the  furtherance  of  life. 

And  what  then,  finally,  was  Goethe's  own  mode  of  activity 
in  a  life  thus  defined  in  his  general  philosophy  ?   Like  Shake- 

d2 


36  SHAKESPEARE   AND   GOETHE. 

speare,  lie  was  a  literary  man ;  his  function  was  literature. 
Yes,  but  in  what  respects  otherwise  than  Shakespeare  had 
done  before  him,  did  he  fulfil  this  literary  function  in  reference 
to  the  world  he  lived  in  and  enjoyed?  In  the  first  place,  as 
an  know,  he  ditt'ered  trom  Shakespeare  in  this,  that  he  did  not 
address  the  world  exclusively  in  the  character  of  a  poet. 
Besides  his  poetry,  properly  so  called,  Goethe  has  left  behind 
him  numerous  prose-writings,  ranking  under  very  different 
heads,  abounding  with  such  deep  and  wise  maxims  and  per- 
ceptions, in  reference  to  all  things  under  the  sun,  as  would 
have  entitled  him,  even  had  he  been  no  poet,  to  rank  as  a  sage. 
So  great,  indeed,  is  Goethe  as  a  thinker  and  a  critic,  that  it 
may  very  well  be  disputed  whether  his  prose-writings,  as  a 
whole,  are  not  more  precious  than  his  poems.  But  even 
setting  apart  this  difference,  and  regarding  the  two  men  in 
their  special  character  as  poets  or  artists,  a  marked  difference 
is  still  discernible.  Hear  Goethe's  own  definition  of  his 
poetical  career  and  aim. 

"  Thus  began  that  tendency  from  which  I  could  not  deviate  my  whole  life 
through ;  namely,  the  tendency  to  turn  into  an  image,  into  a  poem,  everything 
that  delighted  or  troubled  me,  or  otherwise  occupied  me,  and  to  come  to  some 
certain  understanding  with  myself  upon  it,  that  I  might  both  rectify  my 
conceptions  of  external  things,  and  set  my  mind  at  rest  about  them.  The 
faculty  of  doing  this  was  necessary  to  no  one  more  than  to  me,  for  my  natural 
dioposition  whirled  me  constantly  from  one  extreme  to  the  other.  All,  there- 
fore, that  has  been  put  forth  by  me,  consists  of  fragments  of  a  great  confes- 
sion."— Autobiography,  vol.  i.  p.  240. 

Shakespeare's  genius  we  defined  to  be  the  genius  of  uni- 
versal expression;  of  clothing  objects,  circumstances,  and 
feelings  with  magnificent  language  ;  of  pouring  over  the  image 
of  any  given  situation,  whether  suggested  from  within  or  fi*om 
without,  an  effusion  of  the  richest  intellectual  matter  that 
could  possibly  be  related  to  it.  Goethe's  genius,  as  here 
defined  by  himself,  was  something  different  and  narrower. 
It  was  the  genius  of  translation  from  the  subjective  into  the 
objective ;  of  clothing  real  feelings  with  fictitious  circumstance; 
of  giving  happy  intellectual  form  to  states  of  mind,  so  as  to 
dismiss  and  throw  them  off*.  Let  this  distinction  be  sufficiently 
conceived  and  developed,  and  a  full  idea  will  be  obtained  of 
the  exact  difference  between  the  literary  many-sidedness 
attributed  to  Shakespeare  and  that  also  attributed  to  Goethe. 


MILTOFS    YOUTH/ 


Never  surely  did  a  youth  leave  the  academic  halls  of 
England  more  full  of  fair  promise  than  Milton,  when,  at  the 
age  of  twenty-three,  he  quitted  Cambridge  to  reside  at  his 
father's  house,  amid  the  quiet  beauties  of  a  rural  neighbour- 
hood some  twenty  miles  distant  from  London.  Fair  in  person, 
with  a  clear  fresh  complexion,  light  brown  hair  which  parted 
in  the  middle  and  fell  in  curls  to  his  shoulders,  clear  grey 
eyes,  and  a  well-knit  frame  of  moderate  proportions — there 
could  not  have  been  found  a  finer  picture  of  pure  and  ingen- 
uous English  youth.  And  that  health  and  beauty  which 
distinguished  his  outward  appearance,  and  the  effect  of  which 
was  increased  by  a  voice  surpassingly  sweet  and  musical, 
indicated  with  perfect  truth  the  qualities  of  the  mind  within. 
Seriousness,  studiousness,  fondness  for  flowers  and  music, 
fondness  also  for  manly  exercises  in  the  open  air,  courage  and 
resolution  of  character,  combined  with  the  most  maiden  purity 
and  innocence  of  life — these  were  the  traits  conspicuous  in 
Milton  in  his  early  years.  Of  his  accomplishments  it  is 
hardly  necessary  to  take  particular  note.  Whatever  of  learning, 
of  science,  or  of  discipline  in  logic  or  philosophy  the  University 
at  that  time  could  give,  he  had  duly  and  in  the  largest  measure 
acquired.  (No  better  Greek  or  Latin  scholar  probably  had 
the  University  in  that  age  sent  forth  ;  he  was  proficient  in  the 
Hebrew  tongue,  and  in  all  the  other  customary  aids  to  a 
biblical  theology;^  and  he  could  speak  and  write  well  in 
French  and  Italian.  His  acquaintance,  obtained  by  inde- 
pendent reading,  with  the  history  and  with  the  whole  body 

*  North  British  Review:  February,  1852— The  Works  of  John  Milton. 
8  vols.     London,  Pickering,  1851. 


38 

of  the  literature  of  ancient  and  modern  nations,  was  extensive 
and  various.  And,  as  nature  had  endowed  him  in  no  ordinary 
degree  with  that  most  exquisite  of  her  gifts,  the  ear  and  the 
passion  for  harmony,  he  had  studied  music  as  an  art,  and  had 
taught  himself  not  only  to  sing  in  the  society  of  others,  but 
also  to  touch  the  keys  for  his  solitary  pleasure. 

The  instruments  which  Milton  preferred  as  a  musician, 
were,  his  biographers  tells  us,  the  organ  and  the  bass-viol. 
This  fact  seems  to  us  to  be  not  without  its  significance.  Were 
we  to  define  in  one  word  our  impression  of  the  prevailing 
tone,  the  characteristic  mood  and  disposition  of  Milton's  mind, 
even  in  his  early  youth,  we  should  say  that  it  consisted  in  a 
deep  and  habitual  seriousness.  We  use  the  word  in  no-^e  of 
those  special  and  restricted  senses  that  are  sometimes  given 
to  it.  We  do  not  mean  that  Milton,  at  the  period  of  his  early 
youth  with  which  we  are  now  concerned,  was,  or  accounted 
himself  as  being,  a  confessed  member  of  that  noble  party  of 
English  Puritans  with  which  he  afterwards  became  allied,  and 
to  which  he  rendered  such  vast  services.  True,  he  himself 
tells  us,  in  his  account  of  his  education,  that  "  care  had  ever 
been  had  of  him,  with  his  earliest  capacity,  not  to  be  negli- 
gently trained  in  the  precepts  of  the  Christian  religion ;"  and 
in  the  fact  that  his  first  tutor,  selected  for  him  by  his  father, 
was  one  "  Thomas  Young,  a  Puritan  of  Essex  who  cut  his 
hair  short,"  there  is  enough  to  prove  that  the  formation  of  his 
character  in  youth  was  aided  expressly  and  purposely  by 
Puritanical  influences.  But  Milton,  if  ever,  in  a  denomina- 
tional sense,  he  could  be  called  a  Puritan,  (he  always  wore  his 
hair  long,' and  in  other  respects  did  not  conform  to  the  usages 
of  the  Puritan  party,)  could  hardly,  with  any  propriety,  be 
designated  as  a  Puritan  in  this  sense,  at  the  time  when  he  left 
college.  There  is  evidence  that  at  this  time  he  had  not  given 
so  much  attention,  on  his  own  personal  account,  to  matters 
of  religious  doctrine,  as  he  afterwards  bestowed.  That  serious- 
ness of  which  we  speak  was,  therefore,  rather  a  constitutional 
seriousness  ratified  and  nourished  by  rational  reflection,  than 
the  assumed  temper  of  a  sect.  "  A  certain  reservedness  of 
natural  disposition,  and  a  moral  discipline  learnt  out  of  the 


Milton's  youth.  39 

noblest  philosophy" — such,  in  Milton's  own  words,  were  the 
causes  which,  apart  from  his  Christian  training,  would  have 
always  kept  him,  as  he  believed,  above  the  vices  that  debase 
youth.  And  herein  the  example  of  Milton  contradicts  much 
that  is  commonly  advanced  by  way  of  a  theory  of  the  poetical 
character. 

Poets  and  artists  generally,  it  is  held,  are  and  ought  to  be 
distinguished  by  a  predominance  of  sensibility  over  principle, 
an  excess  of  what  Coleridge  called  the  spiritual  over  what  he 
called  the  moral  part  of  man.  A  nature  built  on  quicksands, 
an  organization  of  nerve  languid  or  tempestuous  with  occasion, 
a  soul  falling  and  soaring,  now  subject  to  ecstasies  and  now 
to^riemorses — such,  it  is  supposed,  and  on  no  small  induction 
of  actual  instances,  is  the  appropriate  constitution  of  the  poet. 
Mobility,  absolute  and  entire  destitution  of  principle  properly 
so  called,  capacity  for  varying  the  mood  indefinitely  rather 
than  for  retaining  and  keeping  up  one  moral  gesture  or  reso- 
lution through  all  moods — this,  say  the  theorists,  is  the  essen- 
tial thing  in  the  structure  of  the  artist.  Against  the  truth  of 
this,  however,  as  a  maxim  of  universal  application,  the  cha- 
racter of  Milton,  as  well  as  that  of  Wordsworth  after  him,  is 
a  remarkable  protest.  "Were  it  possible  to  place  before  the 
theorists  all  the  materials  which  exist  for  judging  of  Milton's 
personal  disposition  as  a  young  man,  without  exhibiting  to 
them  at  the  same  time  the  actual  and  early  proofs  of  his 
poetical  genius,  their  conclusion,  were  they  true  to  their 
theory,  would  necessarily  be,  that  the  basis  of  his  nature  was 
too  solid  and  immovable,  the  platform  of  personal  aims  and 
aspirations  over  which  his  thoughts  moved  and  had  footing, 
too  fixed  and  firm,  to  permit  that  he  should  have  been  a  poet. 
Nay,  whosoever,  even  appreciating  Milton  as  a  poet,  shall 
come  to  the  investigation  of  his  writings,  armed  with  that 
preconception  of  the  poetical  character  which  is  sure  to  be 
derived  from  an  intimacy  with  the  character  of  Shakespeare, 
will  hardly  escape  some  feeling  of  the  same  kind.  Seriousness, 
we  repeat,  a  solemn  and  even  austere  demeanour  of  mind,  was 
the  characteristic  of  Milton  even  in  his  youth.  And  the 
outward  manifestation  of  this  was  a  life  of  pure  and  devout 


40  Milton's  youth. 

observance.  This  is  a  point  that  ought  not  to  be  avoided  or 
dismissed  in  mere  general  language ;  for  he  who  does  not  lay 
stress  on  this,  knows  not  and  loves  not  Mifton.  Accept,  then, 
bj  way  of  more  particular  statement,  his  own  remarkable 
words  in  justifying  himself  against  an  inuendo  of  one  of  his 
adversaries  in  later  life,  reflecting  on  the  tenor  of  his  juvenile 
pursuits  and  behaviour.  "  A  certain  niceness  of  nature,"  he 
says,  *'  an  honest  haughtiness  and  self-esteem  either  of  what 
I  was,  or  what  I  might  be,  (which  let  envy  call  pride,)  and 
lastly  that  modesty  whereof,  though  not  in  the  title-page,  yet 
here  I  may  be  excused  to  make  some  beseeming  profession ; 
all  these,  uniting  the  supply  of  their  natural  aid  together,  kept 
me  still  above  those  low  descents  of  mind,  beneath  which  he 
must  deject  and  plunge  himself  that  can  agree  to  saleable  and 
unlawful  prostitutions."  Fancy,  ye  to  whom  the  moral  frailty 
of  genius  is  a  consolation,  or  to  whom  the  association  of  virtue 
with  youth  and  Cambridge  is  a  jest — fancy  Milton,  as  this 
passage  from  his  own  pen  describes  him  at  the  age  of  twenty- 
three,  returning  to  his  father's  house  from  the  university,  full  of 
its  accomplishments  and  its  honours,  an  auburn-haired  youth 
beautiful  as  the  Apollo  of  a  northern  clime,  and  that  beautiful 
body  the  temple  of  a  soul  pure  and  unsoiled !  Truly,  a  son 
for  a  mother  to  take  to  her  arms  with  joy  and  pride  ! 

Connected  with  this  austerity  of  character,  discernible  in 
Milton  even  in  his  youth,  may  be  noted  also,  as  indeed  it  is 
noted  in  the  passage  just  cited,  a  haughty  yet  modest  self- 
esteem,  and  consciousness  of  his  own  powers.  Throughout 
all  Milton's  works  there  may  be  discerned  a  vein  of  this  noble 
egotism,  this  unbashful  self-assertion.  Frequently,  in  arguing 
with  an  opponent,  or  in  petting  forth  his  own  views  on  any 
subject  of  discussion,  he  passes,  by  a  very  slight  topical 
connexion,  into  an  account  of  himself,  his  education,  his 
designs,  and  his  relations  to  the  matter  in  question ;  and  this 
sometimes  so  elaborately  and  at  such  length,  that  the  impres- 
sion is  as  if  he  said  to  his  readers, — "  Besides  all  my  other 
arguments,  take  this  also  as  the  chief  and  conclusive  argument, 
that  it  is  /,  a  man  of  such  and  such  antecedents,  and  with  such 
and  such  powers  to  perform  far  higher  work  than  you  see  me 


MILTON  S  YOUTH.  41 

now  engaged  in,  who  affirm  and  maintain  this."  In  his  later 
years  Milton  evidently  believed  himself  to  be,  if  not  the 
greatest  man  in  England,  at  least  the  greatest  writer,  and  one 
whose  egomet  dixi  was  entitled  to  as  much  force  in  the  intel- 
lectual Commonwealth  as  the  decree  of  a  civil  magistrate  is 
invested  with  in  the  order  of  civil  life.  All  that  he  said  or 
wrote  was  backed  in  his  own  consciousness  by  a  sense  of  the 
independent  importance  of  the  fact,  that  it  was  he,  Milton, 
who  said  or  wrote  it ;  and  often,  after  arguing  a  point  for 
some  time  on  a  footing  of  ostensible  equality  with  his  readers, 
he  seems  suddenly  to  stop,  retire  to  the  vantage-ground  of  his 
own  thoughts,  and  bid  his  readers  follow  him  thither,  if  they 
would  see  the  whole  of  that  authority  which  his  words  had 
failed  to  express. 

Such,  we  say,  is  Milton's  habit  in  his  later  writings.  In 
his  early  life,  of  course,  the  feeling  which  it  shows  existed 
rather  as  an  undefined  consciousness  of  superior  power,  a 
tendency  silently  and  with  satisfaction  to  compare  his  own 
intellectual  measure  with  that  of  others,  a  resolute  ambition 
to  be  and  to  do  something  great.  Now  we  cannot  help  think- 
ing that  it  will  be  found  that  this  particular  form  of  self-esteem 
goes  along  with  that  moral  austerity  of  character  which  we 
have  alleged  to  be  discernible  in  Milton  even  in  his  youth, 
rather  than  with  that  temperament  of  varying  sensibility  which 
is,  according  to  the  general  theory,  regarded  as  characteristic 
of  the  poet.  Men  of  this  latter  type,  as  they  vary  in  the 
entire  mood  of  their  mind,  vary  also  in  their  estimate  of  them- 
selves. No  permanent  consciousness  of  their  own  destiny, 
or  of  their  own  worth  in  comparison  with  others,  belongs  to 
them.  In  their  moods  of  elevation  they  are  powers  to  move 
the  world ;  but  while  the  impulse  that  has  gone  forth  from 
them  in  one  of  these  moods,  may  be  still  thrilling  its  way 
onward  in  wider  and  wider  circles  through  the  hearts  of 
myriads  they  have  never  seen,  they,  the  fountains  of  the 
impulse,  the  spirit  being  gone  from  them,  may  be  sitting 
alone  in  the  very  spot  and  amid  the  ashes  of  their  triumph, 
sunken  and  dead,  despondent  and  self-accusing.  It  requires 
the  evidence  of  positive  results,  the  assurance  of  other  men^s 


42  MILTON'S  YOUTH. 

praises,  the  visible  presentation  of  effects  whicli  they  cannot 
but  trace  to  themselves,  to  convince  such  men  that  they  are 
or  can  do  anything.  Whatever  manifestations  of  egotism, 
whatever  strokes  of  self-assertion  come  from  such  men,  come 
in  the  very  burst  and  phrensy  of  their  passing  resistlessness. 
The  calm,  deliberate,  and  unshaken  knowledge  of  their  own 
superiority  is  not  theirs.  True,  Shakespeare,  the  very  type, 
if  rightly  understood,  of  this  class  of  minds,  is  supposed  in 
his  sonnets  to  have  predicted,  in  the  strongest  and  most  deli- 
berate terms,  his  own  immortality  as  a  poet.  It  could  be 
proved,  however,  were  this  the  place  for  such  an  investigation, 
that  the  common  interpretation  of  those  passages  of  the  sonnets 
which  are  supposed  to  supply  this  trait  in  the  character  of 
Shakespeare,  is  nothing  more  nor  less  than  a  false  reading  of 
a  very  subtle  meaning  which  the  critics  have  missed.  Tliose 
other  passages  of  the  sonnets  which  breathe  an  abject  melan- 
choly and  discontentment  with  self,  which  exhibit  the  poet  as 
"  cursing  his  fate,"  as  "  bewailing  his  outcast  state,"  as  looking 
about  abasedly  among  his  literary  contemporaries,  envying 
the  "  art "  of  one,  and  the  "  scope "  of  another,  and  even 
wishing  sometimes  that  the  very  features  of  his  face  had  been 
different  from  what  they  were  and  like  those  of  some  he  knew, 
are,  in  our  opinion,  of  far  greater  autobiographic  value. 

Nothing  of  this  kind  is  to  be  found  in  Milton.  As  a  Chris- 
tian, indeed,  humiliation  before  God  was  a  duty  the  meaning 
of  which  he  knew  full  well ;  but  as  a  man  moving  among 
other  men,  he  possessed  in  that  moral  seriousness  and  stoic 
scorn  of  temptation  which  characterized  him,  a  spring  of  ever- 
present  pride,  dignifying  his  whole  bearing  among  his  fellows, 
and  at  times  arousing  him  to  a  kingly  intolerance.  In  short, 
instead  of  that  dissatisfaction  with  self  which  we  trace  as  a  not 
unfrequeut  feeling  with  Shakespeare,  we  find  in  Milton,  even 
in  his  early  youth,  a  recollection  firm  and  habitual,  that  he 
was  one  of  those  servants  to  whom  God  had  entrusted  the 
stewardship  of  ten  talents.  In  that  very  sonnet,  for  example, 
written  on  his  twenty-third  birthday,  in  which  he  laments 
that  he  had  as  yet  achieved  so  little,  his  consolation  is,  that 
the  power  of  achievement  was  still  indubitably  within  him — 


MILTON'S  YOUTH.  43 

"  All  is,  if  I  have  grace  to  use  it  so, 
As  ever,  in  my  great  Task-Master's  eye." 

And  what  was  that  special  mode  of  activity  to  which 
Milton,  still  in  the  bloom  and  seed-time  of  his  years,  had 
chosen  to  dedicate  the  powers  of  which  he  was  so  conscious  ? 
He  had  been  destined  by  his  parents  for  the  Church  ;  but  this 
opening  into  life  he  had  definitively  and  deliberately  aban- 
doned. With  equal  decision  he  renounced  the  profession  of 
the  law ;  and  it  does  not  seem  to  have  been  long  after  the 
conclusion  of  his  career  at  the  university,  when  he  renounced 
the  prospects  of  professional  life  altogether.  His  reasons  for 
this,  which  are  to  be  gathered  from  various  passages  of  his 
writings,  seem  to  have  resolved  themselves  into  a  jealous  con- 
cern for  his  own  absolute  intellectual  freedom.  He  had 
determined,  as  he  says,  ''  to  lay  up,  as  the  best  treasure  and 
solace  of  a  good  old  age,  the  honest  liberty  of  free  speech 
from  his  youth;"  and  neither  the  Church  nor  the  Bar  of 
England,  at  the  time  when  he  formed  that  resolution,  was 
a  place  where  he  could  hope  to  keep  it.  For  a  man  so 
situated,  the  alternative,  then  as  now,  was  the  practice  or  pro- 
fession of  literature.  To  this,  therefore,  as  soon  as  he  was 
able  to  come  to  a  decision  on  the  subject,  Milton  had  impli- 
citly, if  not  avowedly,  dedicated  himself.  To  become  a  great 
writer,  and,  above  all,  a  great  poet ;  to  teach  the  English  lan- 
guage a  new  strain  and  modulation ;  to  elaborate  and  sur- 
render over  to  the  English  nation  works  that  would  make  it 
more  potent  and  wise  in  the  age  that  was  passing,  and  more 
memorable  and  lordly  in  the  ages  to  come — such  was  the 
form  which  Milton's  ambition  had  assumed  when,  laying 
aside  his  student's  garb,  he  went  to  reside  under  his  father's 
roof. 

Nor  was  this  merely  a  choice  of  necessity,  the  reluctant 
determination  of  a  young  soul,  "  Church-outed  by  the  pre- 
lates," and  disgusted  with  the  chances  of  the  law.  Milton,  in 
the  Church,  would  certainly  have  been  such  an  archbishop, 
mitred  or  unmitred,  as  England  has  never  seen ;  and  the  very 
passage  of  such  a  man  across  the  sacred  floor  would  have 
trampled  into  timely  extinction  much  that  has  since  sprung 


44  Milton's  youth. 

up  amongst  us  to  trouble  and  perplex,  and  would  have 
modelled  the  ecclesiasticism  of  England  into  a  shape  that  the 
world  might  have  gazed  at,  with  no  truant  glance  backward 
to  the  splendours  of  the  Seven  Hills.  And,  doubtless,  even 
amid  the  traditions  of  the  law,  such  a  man  would  have  per- 
formed the  feats  of  a  Samson,  albeit  of  a  Samson  in  chains. 
An  inward  prompting,  therefore,  a  love  secretly  plighted  to 
the  Muse,  and  a  sweet  comfort  and  delight  in  her  sole  society, 
which  no  other  allurement,  whether  of  profit  or  pastime,  could 
equal  or  diminish, — this,  less  formally  perhaps,  but  as  really 
as  care  for  his  intellectual  liberty,  or  distaste  for  the  esta- 
blished professions  of  his  time,  determined  Milton^s  early 
resolution  as  to  his  future  way  of  life.  On  this  point  it  will 
be  best  to  quote  his  own  words.  "  After  I  had,"  he  says, 
"  for  my  first  years,  by  the  ceaseless  diligence  and  care  of  my 
father  (whom  God  recompense !)  been  exercised  to  the  tongues 
and  some  sciences,  as  my  age  would  sufier,  by  sundry  masters 
and  teachers  both  at  home  and  at  the  schools,  it  was  found 
that,  whether  ought  was  imposed  upon  me  by  them  that  had 
the  overlooking,  or  betaken  to  of  mine  own  choice,  in  English 
or  other  tongue,  prosing  or  versing,  but  chiefly  this  latter,  the 
style,  by  certain  vital  signs  it  had,  was  likely  to  live."  The 
meaning  of  which  sentence  to  a  biographer  of  Milton,  is,  that 
Milton,  before  his  three-and-twentieth  year,  knew  himself  to 
be  a  poet. 

He  knew  this,  he  says,  by  ''  certain  vital  signs,"  discernible 
in  what  he  had  already  written.  What  were  these  "  vital 
signs,^^  these  proofs  indubitable  to  Milton  that  he  had  the  art 
and  faculty  of  a  poet  ?  We  need  but  refer  the  reader  for  the 
answer  to  those  smaller  poetical  compositions  of  Milton,  both 
in  English  and  in  Latin,  which  survive  as  specimens  of  his 
earliest  muse.  Of  these,  some  three  or  four  which  happen 
to  be  specially  dated — such  as  the  Elegy  on  the  Death  of 
a  Fair  Infant,  written  in  1624,  or  in  the  author's  seventeenth 
year;  the  well-known  Hymn  on  the  Morning  of  Christ's 
Nativity,  written  in  1629,  when  the  author  was  just  twenty- 
one  ;  and  the  often-quoted  Sonnet  on  Shakespeare,  written  not 
much  later— may  be  cited  as  convenient  materials  from  which, 


45 

whoever  would  convince  himself  minutely  of  Milton's  youthful 
vocation  to  poetry  rather  than  to  anything  else,  may  derive 
proofs  on  that  head.  Here  will  be  found  power  of  the  most 
rare  and  beautiful  conception,  choice  of  words  the  most  exact 
and  exquisite,  the  most  perfect  music  and  charm  of  verse. 
Above  all,  here  will  be  found  that  ineffable  something — call 
it  imagination  or  what  we  will — wherein  lies  the  intimate  and 
ineradicable  peculiarity  of  the  poet ;  the  art  to  work  on  and 
on  for  ever  in  a  purely  ideal  element,  to  chase  and  marshal 
airy  nothings  according  to  a  law  totally  unlike  that  of  rational 
association,  never  hastening  to  a  logical  end  like  the  school- 
boy when  on  errand,  but  still  lingering  within  the  wood  like 
the  schoolboy  during  holiday.  This  peculiar  mental  habit, 
nowhere  better  described  than  by  Milton  himself  when  he 
speaks  of  verse — 

*'  Such  as  the  meeting  soul  may  pierce 
In  notes,  with  many  a  winding  bout 
Of  linked  sweetness  long  di*awn  out, 
With  wanton  heed  and  giddy  cunning," 

is  so  characteristic  of  the  poetical  disposition,  that,  though  in 
most  of  the  greatest  poets,  as,  for  example,  Dante,  Goethe, 
Shakespeare  in  his  dramas,  Chaucer,  and  almost  all  the  ancient 
Greek  poets,  it  is  not  observable  in  any  extraordinary  degree, 
chiefly  because  in  them  the  element  of  direct  reference  to 
human  life  and  its  interests  had  fitting  preponderance,  yet  it 
may  be  affirmed  that  he  who,  tolerating  or  admiring  these 
poets,  does  not  relish  also  such  poetry  as  that  of  Spenser, 
Keats,  and  Shakespeare  in  his  minor  pieces,  but  complains  of 
it  as  wearisome  and  sensuous,  is  wanting  in  a  portion  of  the 
genuine  poetic  taste. 

There  was  but  one  "  vital  sign,"  the  absence  of  which  in 
Milton  could,  according  to  any  theory  of  the  poetical  cha- 
racter, have  begotten  doubts  in  his  own  mind,  or  in  the 
minds  of  his  friends,  whether  poetry  was  his  peculiar  and 
appropriate  function.  The  single  source  of  possible  doubt  on 
this  head  could  have  been  no  other  than  that  native  austerity 
of  feeling  and  temper,  that  real  though  not  formal  Puritanism 
of  heart  and  intellect,  which  we  have  noticed  as  distinguish- 


46  MILTON'S   YOUTH. 

ing  Milton  from  his  youth  upward.  The  poet,  it  is  said  in 
these  days,  when,  by  psychologizing  a  man,  it  is  supposed  we 
can  tell  what  course  of  life  he  is  fit  for — the  poet  ought  to  be 
universally  sympathetic ;  he  ought  to  hate  nothing,  despise 
nothing.  And  a  notion  equivalent  to  this,  though  by  no 
means  so  articulately  expressed,  was  undoubtedly  prevalent 
in  Milton's  own  time.  As  the  Puritans,  on  the  one  hand,  had 
set  their  faces  against  all  those  practices  of  profane  singing, 
dancing,  masquing,  theatre-going,  and  the  like,  in  which  the 
preservation  of  the  spirit  of  the  arts  was  supposed  to  be 
involved,  so  the  last  party  in  the  world  from  which  the 
reputed  devotees  of  the  arts  in  those  days  would  have  ex- 
pected a  poet  to  arise,  was  that  of  the  Puritans.  Even  in 
"Shakespeare,  and  much  more  in  Ben  Jenson,  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher,  and  other  poets  of  the  Elizabethan  age,  may  be 
traced  evidences  of  an  instinctive  enmity  to  that  Puritanical 
mode  of  thinking  which  was  then  on  the  increase  in  English 
society,  and  in  the  triumph  of  which  these  great  minds  fore- 
saw the  proscription  of  their  craft  and  their  pleasures.  When 
Sir  Toby  says  to  Malvolio,  "  Dost  thou  think,  because  thou 
art  virtuous,  there  shall  be  no  more  cakes  and  ale  ? "  and 
when  the  Clown  adds,  **Yes,  by  Saint  Anne,  and  ginger 
shall  be  hot  i'  the  mouth  too,"  it  is  the  Knight  and  the 
Clown  on  the  one  side,  against  Malvolio  the  Puritan  on  the 
other.  That  the  defence  of  the  festive  in  this  passage  is  not 
borne  by  more  respectable  personages  than  the  two  who 
speak,  is  indeed  a  kind  of  indication  that  Shakespeare's  per- 
sonal feelings  with  regard  to  the  austere  movement  which  he 
saw  gathering  around  him,  were  by  no  means  so  deep  or 
bitter  as  to  discompose  him ;  but  if  his  profounder  soul  could 
behold  such  things  with  serenity,  and  even  pronounce  them 
good,  they  assuredly  met  with  enough  of  virulence  and  in- 
vective among  his  lesser  contemporaries.  That  literary  cru- 
sade against  the  Puritans,  as  canting,  sour-visaged,  mirth- 
forbidding,  art-abhorring  religionists,  which  came  to  its  height 
at  the  time  when  Butler  wrote  his  Hudibras,  and  Wycherley 
his  plays,  was  already  hot  when  the  wits  of  King  James's 
days  used  to  assemble,  after  the  theatre,  in  their  favourite 


Milton's  youth.  47 

taverns  ;  and  if,  sallying  out  after  one  of  their  merry  evenings 
in  their  most  favourite  tavern  of  all,  the  Mermaid  in  Bread 
Street,  these  assembled  poets  and  dramatists  had  gone  in 
search  of  the  youth  who  was  likeliest  to  be  the  poet  of  the 
age  then  beginning,  they  certainly  would  not  have  gone  to 
that  modest  residence  in  the  same  street  where  the  son  of  the 
Puritanic  scrivener,  then  preparing  for  college,  was  busy  over 
his  books.  Nay,  if  Ben  Jonson,  the  last  twenty-nine  years 
of  whose  life  coincided  with  the  first  twenty-nine  of  Milton's, 
had  followed  the  young  student  from  the  house  where  he  was 
born  in  Bread  Street  to  his  rooms  at  Cambridge,  and  had 
there  become  acquainted  with  him  and  looked  over  his  early 
poetical  exercises,  it  is  probable  enough  that,  while  praising 
them  so  far,  he  would  have  constituted  himself  the  organ  of 
that  very  opinion  as  to  the  requisites  of  the  poetical  character 
which  we  are  now  discussing,  and  declared,  in  some  strong 
phrase  or  other,  that  the  youth  would  have  been  all  the  more 
hopeful  as  a  poet  if  he  had  had  a  little  more  of  the  hon  vivant 
in  his  constitution. 

This,  then,  is  a  point  of  no  little  importance  ;  involving,  as 
it  does,  the  relations  of  Milton  as  a  poet  to  the  age  in  which 
he  lived — that  splendid  age  of  Puritan  mastery  in  England, 
which  came  between  the  age  of  Shakespeare  and  Elizabeth, 
and  the  age  of  Dry  den  and  the  second  Charles.  Milton  was 
the  poet  of  that  intermediate  era  ;  that  his  character  was  such 
as  we  have  described  it,  made  him  only  the  more  truly  a 
representative  of  all  that  was  then  deepest  in  English  society ; 
and,  in  inquiring,  therefore,  in  what  manner  Milton's  austerity 
as  a  man  affected  his  art  as  a  poet,  we  are,  at  the  same  time, 
investigating  the  rationale  of  that  remarkable  fact  in  the  his- 
tory of  English  literature,  the  interpolation  of  so  original  and 
isolated  a  development  as  the  Miltonic  poems  between  the 
inventive  luxuriousness  of  the  Elizabethan  epoch,  and  the 
witty  licentiousness  that  followed  the  Restoration. 

First,  then,  it  was  not  humour  that  came  to  the  rescue,  in 
Milton's  case,  to  help  him  out  in  those  respects  wherein,  ac- 
cording to  the  theory  in  question,  the  strictness  and  austerity 
of  his  own  disposition  would  have  injured  his  capacity  to  be 


48  Milton's  youth. 

a  poet.  There  are  and  have  been  men  as  strict  and  austere 
as  he,  who  yet,  by  means  of  this  quality  of  humour,  have  been 
able  to  reconcile  themselves  to  much  in  human  life  lying  far 
away  from,  and  even  far  beneath,  the  sphere  of  their  own 
practice  and  conscientious  liking.  As  Pantagruel,  the  noble 
and  meditative,  endured  and  even  loved  those  immortal  com- 
panions of  his,  the  boisterous  and  profane  Friar  John,  and 
the  cowardly  and  impish  Panurge,  so  these  men,  remaining 
themselves  with  all  rigour  and  punctuality  within  the  limits  of 
sober  and  exemplary  life,  are  seen  extending  their  regards  to 
the  persons  and  the  doings  of  a  whole  circle  of  reprobate 
Falstaifs,  Pistols,  Clowns,  and  Sir  Toby  Belches.  They  cannot 
help  it.  They  may  and  often  do  blame  themselves  for  it; 
they  wish  that,  in  their  intercourse  with  the  world,  they  could 
more  habitually  turn  the  austere  and  judicial  side  of  their  cha- 
racter to  the  scenes  and  incidents  that  there  present  themselves, 
simply  saying  of  each,  "  That  is  right  and  worthy ,^^  or,  "  That 
is  wrong  and  unworthy,"  and  treating  it  accordingly.  But 
they  break  down  in  the  trial.  Suddenly  some  incident  presents 
itself  which  is  not  only  right  but  clumsy,  or  not  only  wrong 
but  comic,  and  straightway  the  austere  side  of  their  character 
wheels  round  to  the  back,  and  judge,  jury,  and  witnesses  are 
convulsed  with  untimely  laughter.  It  was  by  no  means  so 
with  Milton.  As  his  critics  have  generally  remarked,  he  had 
little  of  humour,  properly  so  called,  in  his  composition.  His 
laughter  is  the  laughter  of  scorn.  With  one  unvarying  judicial 
look,  he  confronted  the  actions  of  men,  and,  if  ever  his  tone 
altered  as  lie  uttered  his  judgments,  it  was  only  because  some- 
thing roused  him  to  a  pitch  of  higher  passion.  Take,  as 
characteristic,  the  following  passage,  in  which  he  replies  to 
the  taunt  of  an  opponent  who  had  asked  where  Ae,  the  an- 
tagonist of  profane  amusements,  had  procured  that  knowledge 
of  theatres  and  their  furniture,  which  certain  allusions  in  one 
of  his  books  showed  him  to  possess : — 

"  Since  there  is  such  necessity  to  the  hearsay  of  a  tire,  a  periwig,  or  a 
vizard,  that  plays  must  have  been  seen,  what  difficulty  was  there  in  that, 
when  in  the  colleges  so  many  of  the  young  divines,  and  those  in  next  aptitude 
to  divinity,  have  been  seen  so  often  upon  the  stage,  writhing  and  unboning 
their  clergy  limbs  to  all  the  antic  and  dishonest  gestures  of  Trinculoes, 


MILTON  S  YOUTH.  49 

buffoons,  and  bawds ;  prostituting  tlie  Bbame  of  that  ministry  which  either 
they  had  or  were  nigh  having,  to  the  eyes  of  courtiers  and  court  ladies,  with 
their  grooms  and  mademoiselles  ?  There,  whilst  they  acted  and  overacted, 
among  other  young  scholars,  I  was  a  sj^ectator : — they  thought  themselves 
gallant  men,  and  I  thought  them  fools;  they  made  sport,  and  I  laughed; 
they  mispronounced,  and  I  misliked ;  and,  to  make  up  the  atticism,  they  were 
out,  and  I  hissed." — Apology  foi'  Smectymnuus. 

Who  can  doubt  that  to  a  man,  to  whom  such  a  scene  as 
this  presented  itself  in  a  light  so  different  from  that  in  which 
a  Sliakespeare  would  have  viewed  it,  Friar  John  himself,  if 
encountered  in  the  real  world,  would  have  been  simply  the 
profane  and  unendurable  wearer  of  the  sacred  garb,  Falstaif 
only  a  foul  and  grey-haired  iniquity.  Pistol  but  a  braggart 
and  coward,  and  Sir  Toby  Belch  but  a  beastly  sot  ? 

That  office,  however,  which  humour  did  not  perform  for 
Milton,  in  his  intercourse  with  the  world  of  past  and  present 
things,  was  in  part  performed  by  what  he  did  in  large  measure 
possess — intellectual  inquisitweness ;  respect  for  intellect,  its 
accomplishments,  and  its  rights.   If  any  quality  in  the  actions 
or  writings  of  other  men  could  have  won  Milton's  favourable 
regards,  even  where  his  moral  sense  condemned,  that  quality, 
we  believe,  was  intellectual  gi*eatness,  and  especially  greatness 
of  his  own  stamp,  or  marked  by  any  of  his  own  features. 
Hence  that  tone  of  almost  pitying  admiration  which  pervades 
his  representation  of  the  ruined  Archangel ;  hence  his  uni- 
formly respectful  references  to  the  great  intellects  of  Paganism 
and  of  the   Catholic  world;  and  hence,  we  think,  his  un- 
bounded, and,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  unqualified  reverence  for 
Shakespeare.     As  by  the  direct  exercise  of  his  own  intellect, 
on  the  one  hand,  applied  to  the  rational  discrimination  for 
himself  of  what  was  really  wrong  from  what  was  only  igno- 
rantly  reputed  to  be  so,   he  had  kept   his   mind   clear,   as 
Cromwell  also  did,  from  many  of  those  sectarian  prejudices  in 
the  matter  of  moral  observance  which  were  current  in  his  time 
— justified,    for  example,  his  love  of  music,  his  liking  for 
natural  beauty,  his  habits  of  cheerful  recreation,  his  devotion 
to  various  literature,  and  even,  most  questionable  of  all,  as 
would  then  have  been  thought,  his  affection  for  the  massy 
pillars  and  storied  windows  of  ecclesiastical  architecture ;  so, 
reflexly,  by  a  recognition  of  the  intellectual  liberty  of  others, 


50 

he  seems  to  have  distinctly  apprehended  the  fact  that  there 
might  be  legitimate  manifestations  of  intellect  of  a  kind  very- 
different  from  his  own.  A  Falstaff  in  real  life,  for  example, 
might  have  been  to  Milton  the  most  unendurable  of  horrors, 
just  as,  according  to  his  own  confession,  a  play-acting  clergy- 
man Tvas  his  abomination;  and  yet,  in  the  pages  of  his 
honoured  Shakespeare,  Sir  John  as  mentor  to  the  Prince,  and 
Parson  Hugh  Evans  as  the  Welch  fairy  among  the  mummers, 
may  have  been  creations  he  would  con  over  and  very  dearly 
appreciate.  And  this  accounts  for  the  multifarious  and  unre- 
stricted character  of  his  literary  studies.  Milton,  we  believe, 
was  a  man  whose  intellectual  inquisitiveness  and  respect  for 
talent  would  have  led  him,  in  other  instances  than  that  of 
the  College  theatricals,  to  see  and  hear  much  that  his  heart 
derided,  to  study  and  know  what  he  would  not  strictly  have 
wished  to  imitate.  Ovid  and  Tibullus,  for  example,  contain 
much  that  is  far  from  Miltonic ;  and  yet  that  he  read  poets  of 
this  class  with  particular  pleasure,  let  the  following  quotation 
prove : — 

*'  I  had  my  time,  readers,  as  others  have  who  have  good  learning  bestowed 
upon  them,  to  be  sent  to  those  places  where,  the  opinion  was,  it  might  be 
soonest  attained ;  and,  as  the  manner  is,  was  not  unstudied  in  those  authors 
which  are  most  commended  : — whereof  some  were  grave  orators  and  histo- 
rians, whose  matter  methought  I  loved  indeed,  but,  as  my  age  was,  so  I  under- 
stood them;  others  were  the  smooth  elegiac  poets  whereof  the  schools  are 
not  scarce,  whom,  both  for  the  pleasing  sound  of  their  numerous  writing 
(which,  in  imitation,  I  found  most  easy,  and  most  agreeable  to  nature's  part 
in  me)  and  for  their  matter  (which,  what  it  is,  there  be  few  who  know  not), 
I  was  so  allured  to  read  that  no  recreation  came  to  me  more  welcome — for, 
that  it  was  then  those  years  with  me  which  are  excused,  though  they  be  least 
Bevere,  I  maybe  saved  the  labour  to  remember  ye." — Apology  for  Smectymnuus. 

That  Milton,  then,  notwithstanding  his  natural  austerity 
and  seriousness  even  in  youth,  was  led  by  his  keen  apprecia- 
tion of  literary  beauty  and  finish,  and  especially  by  his 
delight  in  sweet  and  melodious  verse,  to  read  and  enjoy  the 
poetry  of  those  writers  who  are  usually  quoted  as  examples  of 
the  lusciousness  and  sensuousness  of  the  poetic  nature,  and 
even  to  prefer  them  to  all  others — is  specially  stated  by 
himself.  But  let  the  reader,  who  may  think  he  sees  in  this  a 
ground  for  suspecting  that  we  have  assigned  too  much  impor- 
tance to  Milton's  personal  seriousness  of  disposition  as  a  cause 


Milton's  youth.  51 

affecting  his  aims  and  art  as  a  poet,  distinctly  mark  the 
continuation. 

"  Whence,  having  observed  them "  (the  elegiac  and  love  poets)  **  to 
account  it  the  chief  glory  of  their  wit,  in  that  they  were  ablest  to  judge,  to 
praise,  and  by  that  could  esteem  themselves  worthiest  to  love,  those  high  per- 
fections which,  under  one  or  other  name,  they  took  to  celebrate,  I  thought 
with  myself,  by  every  instinct  and  presage  of  nature,  (which  is  not  wont  to  be 
false,)  that  what  emboldened  them  to  this  task  might,  with  such  diligence  as 
they  vised,  embolden  me,  and  that  what  judgment,  wit,  or  elegance  was  my 
share  would  herein  best  appear,  and  best  value  itself,  by  how  much  more 
wisely,  and  with  more  love  of  virtue  I  should  choose  (let  rude  ears  be  absent !) 
the  object  of  not  unlike  praises.  For,  albeit  these  thoughts  to  some  will 
seem  virtuous  and  commendable,  to  others  only  pardonable,  to  a  third  sort 
perhaps  idle,  yet  the  mentioning  of  them  now  will  end  in  serious,  Nor  blame 
it,  readers,  in  those  years  to  propose  to  themselves  such  a  reward  as  the 
noblest  dispositions  above  other  things  in  this  life  have  sometimes  preferred ; 
whereof  not  to  be  sensible,  when  good  and  fair  in  one  person  meet,  argues 
both  a  gross  and  shallow  judgment,  and  withal  an  ungentle  and  swainish 
breast.  For,  by  the  firm  settling  of  these  persuasions,  I  became,  to  my  best 
memory,  so  much  a  proficient,  that,  if  I  found  these  authors  anywhere  speak- 
ing unworthy  things  of  themselves,  or  unchaste  of  those  names  which  before 
they  had  extolled,  this  effect  it  wrought  in  me : — From  that  time  forward, 
their  art  I  still  applauded,  but  the  men  I  deplored ;  and,  above  them  all,  pre- 
ferred the  two  famous  renowners  of  Beatrice  and  Laura,  who  never  wrote  but 
honour  of  them  to  whom  they  devote  their  verse,  displaying  sublime  and 
pure  thoughts,  without  transgression.  And  long  it  was  not  after  when  I  was 
confirmed  in  this  opinion,  that  he  who  would  not  be  frustrate  of  his  hope  to 
write  well  hereafter  in  laudable  things,  ought  himself  to  be  a  true  poem — 
that  is,  a  composition  and  pattern  of  the  best  and  honourablest  things ;  not 
presuming  to  sing  high  praises  of  heroic  men  or  famous  cities,  unless  he  have 
in  himself  the  experience  and  the  practice  of  all  that  which  is  praiseworthy." — 
Apology  for  Smectymnmis. 

Here,  at  last,  therefore,  we  have  Milton's  own  judgment  on 
the  matter  of  our  inquiry.  He  had  speculated  himself  on  that 
subject ;  he  had  made  it  a  matter  of  conscious  investigation  what 
kind  of  moral  tone  and  career  would  best  fit  a  man  to  be  a  poet, 
on  the  one  hand,  or  would  be  most  likely  to  frustrate  his  hopes 
of  writing  well,  on  the  other ;  and  his  conclusion,  as  we  see, 
was  dead  against  the  ''  wild  oats  "  theory.  Had  Ben  Jonson, 
according  to  our  previous  fancy,  proffered  him,  out  of  kindly 
interest,  a  touch  of  that  theory,  while  criticising  his  juvenile 
poems,  and  telling  him  how  he  might  learn  to  write  better, 
there  would  have  descended  on  the  lecturer,  as  sure  as  fate,  a 
rebuke,  though  from  young  lips,  that  would  have  made  his 
old  face  blush.  "  He  who  would  not  he  frustrate  of  Ms  hope  to 
write  well  hereafter  in  laudable  things,  ought  himself  to  he  a  true 
poem:'^ — fancy  that  sentence — an  early  and  often  pronounced 
formula  of  Milton's,  as  we  may  be  sure  it  was  —hurled,  some 

e2 


52  MILTON'S  YOUTH. 

evening,  could  time  and  chance  have  permitted  it,  into  the  midst 
of  the  assembled  Elizabethan  wits  at  the  Mermaid !  What 
interruption  of  the  jollity,  what  mingled  uneasiness  and  resent- 
ment, what  turning  of  faces  towards  the  new  speaker,  what 
forced  laughter  to  conceal  consternation  !  Only  Shakespeare, 
one  thinks,  had  he  been  present,  would  have  fixed  on  the  bold 
youth  a  mild  and  approving  eye,  would  have  looked  round  the 
room  thoroughly  to  observe  the  whole  scene,  and,  remem- 
bering some  passages  in  his  own  life,  would  mayhap  have 
had  his  own  thoughts !  Certainly,  at  least,  the  essence  of 
that  wonderful  and  special  development  of  the  literary  genius 
of  England,  which  came  between  the  Elizabethan  epoch  and 
the  epoch  of  the  Restoration,  and  which  was  represented  and 
consummated  in  Milton  himself,  consisted  in  the  fact  that 
then  there  was  a  temporary  protest,  and  by  a  man  able  to 
make  it  good,  against  the  theory  of  "  wild  oats,"  as  current 
before  and  current  since.  The  nearest  poet  to  Milton  in  this 
respect,  since  Milton's  time,  has  undoubtedly  been  Words- 
worth. 


THE  THEEE  DEYILS: 
LUTHER'S,  MILTON'S,  AND  GOETHE'S/ 

Luther,   Milton,    and    Goetlie :    these   are    three    strange 
names  to  bring  together.     It  strikes  us,  however,  that  the 
effect  will   be   interesting  if  we  connect  these  three  great 
names,  as  having  each  represented  to  us  the  Principle  of 
Evil,  and  each  represented  him  in  a  different  way.     Each  of 
the  three  has  left  on  record  his  conception  of  a  great  accursed 
being,  incessantly  working  in  human  affairs,  and  whose  func- 
tion it  is  to  produce  evil.     There  is  nothing  more  striking 
about  Luther  than  the  amazing  sincerity  of  his  belief  in  the 
existence  of  such  an  evil  being,  the  great  general  enemy  of 
mankind,  and  whose  specific  object,  at  that  time,  it  was  to 
resist   Luther's   movement,  and,  if  possible,   "  cut  his  soul 
out  of  God's  mercy."     What  Luther's  exact  conception  of 
this  being  was,  is  to  be  gathered  from  his  life  and  writings. 
Again,  we  have  Milton's  Satan.  And,  lastly,  we  have  Goethe's 
Mephistopheles.    Nor  is  it  possible  to  confound  the  three,  or, 
for  a  moment,  to  mistake  the  one  for  the  other.     They  are  as 
unlike  as  it  is  possible  for  three  grand  conceptions  of  the 
same  thing  to  be.     It  cannot,  therefore,  but  be  interesting 
and  profitable  to  make  their  peculiarities  and  their  differences 
a  subject  of  study.     Milton's  Satan,  and  Goethe's  Mephisto- 
pheles, have  indeed  been  frequently  contrasted  in  a  vague, 
antithetic  way;  for  no  writer  could  possibly  go  through  a 
description  of  Goethe's  Mephistopheles  without  saying  some- 
thing or  other  about  Milton's  Satan.     The  exposition,  how- 
ever, of  the   difference   between   the   two   has   never  been 
sufficiently  elaborate  ;  and,  besides,  it  appears  to  us,  that  it 
will  have  the  effect  of  giving  the  whole  speculation  greater 

*  Feasee's  Magazine.     Dec.  1844. 


54  THE   THREE    DEVILS: 

value  and  interest  if,  in  addition  to  Milton's  Satan  and 
Goethe's  Mepliistopheles,  we  take  in  Luther's  Devil.  In 
this  paper,  therefore,  we  shall  attempt  to  expound  the  differ- 
ence between  Luther's  Devil,  Milton^s  Satan,  and  Goethe's 
Mephistopheles ;  and,  of  course,  the  way  to  do  this  effectively 
is  to  expound  the  three  in  succession.  It  is  scarcely  necessary 
to  premise  that  here  there  is  to  be  no  theological  discussion. 
All  that  we  propose  is,  to  compare,  as  we  find  them,  three 
very  striking  delineations  of  the  Evil  Principle,  one  of  them 
experimental,  the  other  two  poetical. 

These  last  words  indicate  one  respect,  in  which,  it  will  be 
perceived,  at  the  outset,  that  Luther's  conception  of  the  Evil 
Principle  on  the  one  hand,  and  Milton^s  and  Goethe's  on  the 
other,  are  fundamentally  distinguishable.  All  the  three,  of 
course,  are  founded  on  the  Scriptural  proposition  of  the 
existence  of  a  being  whose  express  function  it  is  to  produce 
evil.  Luther,  firmly  believing  every  jot  and  tittle  of  Scrip- 
ture, believed  the  proposition  about  the  Devil  also,  and  so  the 
whole  of  his  experience  of  evil  in  himself  and  others  was 
cast  into  the  shape  of  a  verification  of  that  proposition.  Had 
he  started  without  such  a  preliminary  conception,  his  expe- 
rience would  have  had  to  encounter  the  difficulty  of  expressing 
itself  in  some  other  way ;  which,  it  is  likely,  would  not  have 
been  nearly  so  effective,  or  so  Luther-like.  Milton,  too, 
borrows  the  elements  of  his  conception  of  Satan  from  Scrip- 
ture. The  Fallen  Angel  of  the  Bible  is  the  hero  of  Paradise 
Lost ;  and  one  of  the  most  striking  things  about  this  poem 
is,  that  in  it  we  see  the  grand  imagination  of  the  poet  blazing 
in  the  very  track  of  the  propositions  of  the  theologian.  And, 
though  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  Goethe's  Mephistopheles 
is  conceived  less  in  the  spirit  of  Scripture  than  either  Milton's 
Satan  or  Luther's  Devil,  still,  even  in  Mephistopheles  we 
discern  the  lineaments  of  the  same  traditional  being.  All 
the  three,  then,  have  this  in  common — that  they  are  founded 
on  the  Scriptural  proposition  of  the  existence  of  an  accursed 
being,  whose  function  it  is  to  produce  evil,  and  that,  more  or 
less,  they  adopt  the  Scriptural  account  of  that  being.  Still, 
as  we  have  said,  Luther's  conception  of  this  being  belongs  to 


Luther's,  milton's,  and  goethe's.  55 

one  category ;  Milton's  and  Goethe's  to  another.  Luther's  is  a 
biographical  phenomenon  ;  Milton's  and  Goethe's  are  literary 
performances.  Luther  illustrated  the  Evil  Being  of  Scripture 
to  himself,  by  means  of  his  personal  experience.  Whatever  re- 
sistance he  met  with ;  whatever  obstacle  to  Divine  grace  he 
found  in  his  own  heart  or  in  external  circumstances ;  whatever 
event  he  saw  plainly  cast  in  the  way  of  the  progress  of  the 
Gospel;  whatever  outbreak  of  a  bad  or  unamiable  spirit  occurred 
in  the  Church  ;  whatever  strange  phenomenon  of  nature  wore  a 
malevolent  aspect, — out  of  that  he  obtained  a  clearer  notion 
of  the  Devil.  In  this  way,  it  might  be  said,  that  Luther  was 
all  his  life  gaining  a  deeper  insight  into  the  Devil's  character. 
On  the  other  hand,  Milton's  Satan  and  Goethe's  Mephisto- 
pheles  are  poetical  creations — the  one  epic,  the  other  dramatic. 
Borrowing  the  elements  of  his  conception  from  Scripture, 
Milton  set  himself  to  the  task  of  describing  the  ruined  arch- 
angel as  he  may  be  supposed  to  ha,ve  existed  at  that  epoch  of 
the  creation  when  he  had  hardly  decided  his  own  function ; 
as  yet  warring  with  the  Almighty,  or,  in  pursuit  of  a  gigantic 
scheme  of  revenge,  travelling  from  star  to  star.  Poetically 
assuming  the  device  of  the  same  Scriptural  proposition,  Goethe 
set  himself  to  the  task  of  representing  the  Spirit  of  Evil  as  he 
existed  six  thousand  years  later ;  no  longer  gifted  with  the 
same  powers  of  locomotion,  or  struggling  for  admission  into 
this  part  of  the  universe,  but  plying  his  understood  function 
in  crowded  cities  and  on  the  minds  of  individuals. 

So  far  as  the  mere  fact  of  Milton's  making  Satan  the  hero 
of  his  epic,  or  of  Goethe's  making  Mephistopheles  a  character 
in  his  drama,  qualifies  us  to  speak  of  the  theological  opinions 
of  the  one  or  of  the  other,  we  are  not  entitled  to  say  that  either 
Milton  or  Goethe  believed  in  a  Devil  at  all,  as  Luther  did. 
Or,  again,  it  is  quite  conceivable  that  Milton  might  have 
believed  in  a  Devil  as  sincerely  as  Luther  did,  and  that 
Goethe  might  have  believed  in  a  Devil  as  sincerely  as  Luther 
did,  also ;  and  yet,  that,  in  that  case,  the  Devil  which  Milton 
believed  in  might  not  have  been  the  Satan  of  the  Paradise 
Lost,  and  the  Devil  which  Goethe  believed  in  might  not  have 
been  the  Mephistopheles  of  Faust,     Of  course,  we  have  other 


56  THE  THREE   DEVILS: 

means  of  knowing  whether  Milton  did  actually  believe  in  the 
existence  of  the  great  accursed  being  whose  fall  he  sings.  It 
is  also  plain  that  Goethe's  Mephistopheles  resembles  Luther's 
Devil  more  than  Milton's  Satan  does,  in  this  respect — that 
Mephistopheles  is  the  expression  of  a  great  deal  of  Goethe's 
actual  observation  of  life  and  experience  in  human  affairs. 
Still,  neither  the  fact,  on  the  one  hand,  that  Milton  did  believe 
in  the  existence  of  the  Evil  Spirit,  nor  the  fact,  on  the  other, 
that  Mephistopheles  is  an  expression  for  the  aggregate  of 
much  profound  thinking  on  the  part  of  Goethe,  is  of  force 
to  obliterate  the  fundamental  distinction  between  Luther's 
Devil,  as  a  biographical  reality,  and  Milton's  Satan  and 
Goethe's  Mephistopheles  as  two  literary  performances.  If  we 
might  risk  summing  up  under  the  light  of  this  preliminary 
distinction,  perhaps  the  following  would  be  near  the  truth : — 
Luther  had  as  strong  a  faith  as  ever  man  had  in  tlie  existence 
and  activity  of  the  Evil  Spirit  of  Scripture ;  he  used  to  re- 
cognise the  operation  of  this  Spirit  in  every  individual 
instance  of  evil  as  it  occurred ;  ha  used,  moreover,  to  con- 
ceive that  this  Spirit  and  he  were  personal  antagonists,  and 
so,  just  as  one  man  forms  to  himself  a  distinct  idea  of  the 
character  of  another  man  to  whom  he  stands  in  an  important 
relation,  Luther  came  to  form  to  himself  a  distinct  idea  of  the 
Devil ;  and  what  this  idea  was  it  seems  possible  to  find  out  by 
examining  his  writings.  Milton,  again,  chose  the  Scripture 
personage,  as  the  hero  of  an  epic  poem,  and  employed  his 
grand  imagination  in  realising  the  Scripture  narrative:  we 
have  reason  also  to  know  that  he  did  actually  believe  in  the 
Devil's  existence;  and  it  agrees  with  what  we  know  of 
Milton's  character  to  suppose  that  the  Devil  thus  believed  in 
would  be  pretty  much  the  same  magnificent  being  he  has 
described  in  his  poem — though,  on  the  whole,  we  should  not 
say  that  Milton  was  a  man  likely  to  carry  about  with  him,  in 
daily  affairs,  any  constant  recognition  of  the  Devil's  presence. 
Lastly,  Goethe,  adapting,  for  a  different  literary  effect,  the 
Scriptural  and  traditional  account  of  the  same  being,  conceived 
liis  Mephistopheles.  This  Mephistopheles,  there  is  no  doubt, 
had  a  real  allegoric  meaning  with  Goethe;  he  meant  him 


Luther's,  milton's,  and  goethe's.  57 

to  typify  the  Evil  Spirit  in  modern  civilization ;  but  wlietlier 
Goethe  did  actually  believe  in  the  existence  of  a  supernatural 
intelligence,  whose  function  it  is  to  produce  evil,  is  a  question 
which  no  one  will  take  it  upon  himself  to  answer,  although, 
if  he  did,  it  may  be  unhesitatingly  asserted  that  this  super- 
natural intelligence  cannot  have  been  Mephistopheles. 

From  all  this  it  appears,  that  Luther's  conception  of  the 
Evil  Being  belongs  to  one  category,  Milton's  and  Goethe's  to 
another.  Let  us  consider,  first,  Milton's  Satan,  secondly, 
"  )ethe's  Mephistopheles,  and  thirdly,  Luther's  Devil. 

The  difficulties  which  Milton  had  to  overcome  in  writing 
liis  Paradise  Lost  were  immense.  The  gist  of  these  difficulties 
may  be  defined  as  consisting  in  this,  that  the  poet  had  at  once 
to  represent  a  supernatural  condition  of  being,  and  to  construct 
a  story.  He  had  to  describe  the  ongoings  of  angels,  and,  at 
the  same  time,  to  make  on^  event  naturally  follow  another. 
It  was  comparatively  easy  for  Milton  to  sustain  his  conception 
of  these  superhuman  beings  as  mere  objects  or  phenomena — 
to  represent  them  flying  singly  through  space  like  huge  black 
shadows,  or  standing  opposite  to  each  other  in  hostile  battal- 
ions ;  but  to  construct  a  story  in  which  these  beings  should 
be  the  agents,  to  exhibit  these  beings  thinking,  scheming, 
blundering,  in  such  a  way  as  to  produce  a  likely  succession  of 
events,  was  enormously  difficult.  The  difficulty  was  to  make  the 
course  of  events  correspond  with  the  reputation  of  the  objects. 
To  do  this  perfectly  was  literally  impossible.  It  is  possible  for 
the  human  mind  to  conceive  twenty -four  great  supernatural 
beings  existing  together  at  any  given  moment  in  space  ;  but 
it  is  utterly  impossible  to  conceive  what  would  occur  among 
these  twenty-four  beings  during  twenty-four  hours.  The 
value  of  time,  the  amount  of  history  that  can  be  transacted  in 
a  given  period,  depends  on  the  nature  and  prowess  of  the 
beings  whose  volitions  make  the  chain  of  events ;  and  so  a 
lower  order  of  beings  can  have  no  idea  at  what  rate  things 
happen  in  a  higher.  The  mode  of  causation  will  be  different 
from  that  with  which  they  are  acquainted. 

This  is  the  difficulty  with  which  Milton  had  to  struggle ; 


58  THE  THREE   DEVILS: 

or  rather,  tins  is  the  diiSSculty  with  which  he  did  not 
struggle.  He  had  to  construct  a  narrative  ;  and  so,  while  he 
represents  to  us  the  full  stature  of  his  superhuman  beings  as 
mere  objects  or  phenomena,  he  does  not  attempt  to  make 
events  follow  each  other  at  a  higher  rate  among  these  beings 
than  thej  do  amongst  ourselves,  except  in  the  single  respect 
of  their  being  infinitely  more  powerful  physical  agents  than 
we  are.  Whatever  feeling  of  inconsistency  is  experienced  in 
reading  the  Paradise  Lost  may  be  traced,  we  think,  to  the 
fact  that  the  necessities  of  the  story  obliged  the  poet  not  to 
attempt  to  make  the  rate  of  causation  among  these  beings  as 
extraordinary  as  his  description  of  them  as  phenomena.  Such 
a  feeling  of  inconsistency  there  is  ;  and  yet  Milton  sustains 
his  flight  as  nobly  as  mortal  could  have  done.  Throughout 
the  whole  poem  we  see  him  recollecting  his  original  conception 
of  Satan  as  an  object: — 

**  Thus  Satan,  talking  to  his  nearest  mate, 
With  head  uplift  above  the  waves,  and  eyes 
That  sparkling  blazed ;  his  other  parts  besides, 
Prone  on  the  flood,  extended  long  and  large. 
Lay  floating  many  a  rood." 

And  this  is  a  great  thing  to  have  done.  If  the  poet  ever 
flags  in  his  conception  of  these  superhuman  beings  as  objects, 
it  is  when  he  finds  it  necessary  to  describe  a  multitude  of  them 
asssembled  together  in  some  place  ;  and  his  usual  device  then 
is  to  reduce  the  bulk  of  the  greatest  number.  This,  too,  is  for 
the  behoof  of  the  story.  If  it  is  necessary,  for  instance,  to 
assemble  the  angels  to  deliberate,  this  must  be  done  in  an 
audience-hall,  and  the  human  mind  refuses  to  go  beyond 
certain  limits  in  its  conception  of  what  an  audience-hall  is. 
Again,  the  gate  of  Hell  is  described,  although  the  Hell  of 
Milton  is  a  mere  vague  extent  of  fiery  element,  which,  in  strict 
keeping,  could  not  be  described  as  having  a  gate.  The  narra- 
tive, however,  requires  the  conception.  And  so  in  other  cases. 
Still,  consistency  of  description  is  well  sustained. 

Nor  is  it  merely  as  objects  or  phenomena  that  Milton  sus- 
tains throughout  his  whole  poem  a  consistent  conception  of  the 
Angels.  He  is  likewise  consistent  in  his  description  of  them 
as  physical  agents.     Lofty  stature  and  appearance  carry  with 


Luther's,  milton's,  and  goethe's. 

them  a  promise  of  so  much  physical  power ;  and  hence,  in 
Milton's  case,  the  necessity  of  finding  words  and  figures  capable 
of  expressing  modes  and  powers  of  mechanical  action,  on  the 
part  of  the  Angels,  as  superhuman  as  the  stature  and  appear- 
ance he  has  given  to  them.  This  complicated  his  difficulties 
very  much.  It  is  quite  conceivable  that  a  man  should  be  able 
to  describe  the  mere  appearance  of  a  gigantic  being,  standing 
up,  as  it  were,  with  his  back  to  a  wall,  and  yet  utterly  break 
down,  and  not  be  able  to  find  words,  when  he  tried  to  describe 
this  gigantic  being  stepping  forth  into  colossal  activity,  and 
doing  some  characteristic  thing.  Milton  has  overcome  the 
difficulty.  His  conception  of  the  Angels  as  physical  agents 
does  not  fall  beneath  his  conception  of  them  as  mere  objects. 
In  his  description,  for  instance,  in  the  sixth  book,  of  the  Angels 
tearing  up  mountains  by  the  roots,  and  flinging  them  upon 
each  other,  we  have  strength  suggested  corresponding  to  the 
reputed  stature  of  the  beings.  In  extension  of  the  same  remark, 
we  may  observe  how  skilfully  Milton  has  aggrandised  and 
eked  out  his  conception  of  the  superhuman  beings  he  is 
describing,  by  endowing  them  with  the  power  of  infinitely 
swift  motion  through  space.  On  this  point,  we  ofier  our  readers 
an  observation  which  they  may  verify  for  themselves  : — Milton, 
we  are  persuaded,  had  it  vaguely  in  his  mind,  throughout 
Paradise  Lost,  that  the  bounding  peculiarity  between  the 
human  condition  of  being  and  the  angelic  one  he  is  describing 
is  the  la,s5c-ef-gnn4taiiiiiJ«^  We,  and  all  that  is  cognisable  by 
us,  are  subject  to  this  law ;  but  creation  may  be  peopled  with 
beings  who  are  not  subject  to  it,  and  to  us  these  beings  are  as 
if  they  were  not.  But,  whenever  one  of  these  beings  becomes 
cognisable  by  us,  he  instantly  becomes  subject  to  gravitation ; 
and  he  must  resume  his  own  mode  of  being  ere  he  can  be  free 
from  its  consequences.  The  Angels  were  not  subject  to  gravi- 
tation ;  that  is  to  say,  they  had  the  means  of  moving  in  any 
direction  at  will.  When  they  rebelled,  and  were  punished  by 
expulsion  from  heaven,  they  did  not  fall  out ;  for,  in  fact,  so 
far  as  the  description  intimates,  there  existed  no  planet,  no 
distinct  material  element  towards  which  they  could  gravitate. 
They  were  driven  out  by  a  pursuing  fire.     Then,  after  their 


60  THE  THEEE   DEVILS: 

fall,  they  had  the  power  of  rising  upward,  of  navigating  space, 
of  quitting  Hell,  directing  their  flight  to  one  glittering  planet, 
alighting  on  its  rotund  surface,  and  then  bounding  off  again, 
and  away  to  another.  A  corollary  of  this  fundamental  differ- 
ence between  the  human  condition  of  being  and  the  angelic 
would  be,  that  angels  are  capable  of  direct  vertical  action, 
whereas  men  are  capable  mainly  of  horizontal.  An  army  of 
men  can  exist  only  as  a  square,  or  other  plane  figure,  whereas 
an  army  of  angels  can  exist  as  a  cube  or  parallelopiped. 

Now,  in  every  thing  relating  to  the  physical  action  of  the 
Angels,  even  in  carrying  out  this  notion  of  their  mode  of  being, 
Milton  is  most  consistent.  But  it  was  impossible  to  follow 
out  the  superiority  of  these  beings  to  its  whole  length.  The 
attempt  to  do  so  would  have  made  a  narrative  impossible. 
Exalting  our  conception  of  these  beings  as  mere  objects,  or  as 
mere  physical  agents,  as  much  as  he  could,  it  would  have 
been  suicidal  in  the  poet  to  attempt  to  realise  history  as  it 
really  must  be  among  these  beings.  No  human  mind  could 
do  it.  He  had,  therefore,  except  where  the  notion  of  physical 
superiority  assisted  him,  to  make  events  follow  each  other 
just  as  they  would  in  a  human  narrative.  The  motives,  the 
reasonings,  the  misconceptions  of  these  beings, — all  that  deter- 
mined the  succession  of  events — he  had  to  make  substantially 
human.  The  whole  narrative,  for  instance,  proceeds  on  the 
supposition  of  these  supernatural  beings  having  no  higher 
degree  of  knowledge  than  human  beings,  with  equal  physical 
advantages,  would  have  had  under  similar  circumstances. 
Credit  the  spirits  with  a  greater  degree  of  insight — credit  them 
even  with  such  a  strong  conviction  of  the  Divine  omnipotence 
as,  in  their  reputed  condition  of  being,  we  can  hardly  conceive 
them  not  attaining — and  the  whole  of  Milton's  story  is  ren- 
dered impossible.  The  crushing  conviction  of  the  Divine 
omnipotence  would  have  prevented  them  from  rebelling  with 
the  alleged  motive ;  or,  after  having  rebelled,  it  would  have 
prevented  them  from  struggling  with  the  alleged  hope.  In 
Paradise  Lost,  the  working  notion  which  the  devils  have 
about  God  is  exactly  that  which  human  beings  have  when 
they  hope  to  succeed  in  a  bad  enterprise.   Otherwise,  the  poem 


Luther's,  milton's,  and  goethe's.  61 

could  not  have  been  written.  Supposing  the  fallen  angels  to 
liave  had  a  working  notion  of  the  Deity  as  superhuman  as 
their  reputed  appearance  and  physical  greatness,  the  events  of 
the  Paradise  Lost  might  have  happened  nevertheless;  but 
the  chain  of  volitions  would  not  have  been  the  same,  and  it 
would  have  been  impossible  for  any  human  poet  to  realise  the 
narrative. 

These  remarks  are  necessary  to  prepare  us  for  conceiving 
the  Satan  of  Milton.  Except,  as  we  have  said,  for  an  occa- 
sional feeling  during  a  perusal  of  the  poem  that  the  style  of 
thinking  and  speculating  about  the  issue  of  their  enterprise  is 
too  meagre  and  human  for  a  race  of  beings  physically  so 
superhuman,  one's  astonishment  at  the  consistency  of  the 
poet's  conceptions  is  unmitigated  throughout.  Such  keeping 
is  there  between  one  conception  and  another,  such  a  distinct 
material  grasp  had  the  poet  of  his  whole  subject,  so  little  is 
there  of  the  mystic  or  the  hazy  in  his  descriptions  from  begin- 
ning to  end,  that  it  would  be  quite  possible  to  prefix  to  the 
Paradise  Lost  an  illustrative  diagram  exhibiting  the  uni- 
versal space  in  which  Milton  conceived  his  beings  moving  to 
and  fro,  divided,  as  he  conceived  it,  at  first  into  two  or  three, 
and  afterwards  into  four  tropics  or  regions.'  Then  his  narra- 
tive is  so  clear,  that  a  brief  prose  version  of  it'  would  be  a 
history  of  Satan  in  the  interval  "between  his  own  fall  and  the 
fall  of  man.  -^ 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  Milton  as  a  poet  proceeds  on  the 
Homericjaetlwd,  and  not  on  the  Shakespearian ;  devoting  the 
whole  strength  of  his  genius  to  the  object,  not  of  being  discur- 
sive and  original,  not  of  making  profound  remarks  on  every 
thing  as  he  goes  along,  but  of  carrying  on  a  sublime  and 
stately  narrative.  We  should  hardly  be  led  to  assert,  how- 
ever, that  the  difference  between  the  epic  and  the  drama  lies 
in  this,  that  the  latter  may  be  discursive  and  reflective, 
while  the  former  cannot.  We  can  conceive  an  epic  written 
after  the  Shakespearian  method ;  that  is,  one  which,  while 
strictly  sustaining  a  narrative,  should  be  profoundly  expo- 
sitory in  its  spirit.  Certain  it  is,  however,  that  Milton  wrote 
after  the  Homeric  method,  and  did  not  aim  at  strewing  his 


62  THE  THREE   DEVILS: 

text  with  luminous  original  propositions.  One  consequence 
of  this  is,  that  the  way  to  obtain  an  idea  of  Milton's  Satan  is 
not  to  lay  hold  of  specific  sayings  that  fall  from  his  mouth, 
but  to  go  through  his  history.  Goethe's  Mephistopheles,  we 
shall  find,  on  the  other  hand,  reveals  himself  in  the  charac- 
teristic propositions  which  he  utters.  Satan  is  to  be  studied 
by  following  his  progress ;  Mephistopheles,  by  attending  to 
his  remarks. 

In  the  history  of  Milton's  Satan,  it  is  important  to  begin 
at  the  time  of  his  being  an  archangel.  Before  the  creation  of 
our  world,  there  existed,  according  to  Milton,  a  grand  race  of 
bsings  altogether  different  from  what  we  are.  These  beings 
were  spirits.  They  did  not  lead  a  planetary  existence  ;  they 
tenanted  space,  in  some  strange,  and,  to  us,  inconceivable 
way.  Or,  rather,  they  did  not  tenant  all  space,  but  only  that 
upper  and  illuminated  part  of  infinity  called  Heaven.  For 
Heaven,  in  Milton,  is  not  to  be  considered  as  a  locality,  but 
as  a  region  stretching  infinitely  out  on  all  sides — an  immense 
extent  of  continent  and  kingdom.  The  infinite  darkness, 
howling  and  blustering  underneath  heaven,  was  Chaos,  or 
Night.  What  was  the  exact  mode  of  being  of  the  spirits 
who  lived  disseminated  through  Heaven  is  unknown  to  us ; 
but  it  was  social.  Moreover,  there  subsisted,  between  the 
multitudinous,  far-extending  population  of  spirits,  and  the 
Almighty  Creator,  a  relation  closer,  or,  at  least,  more  sensible 
and  immediate,  than  that  which  exists  between  human  beings 
and  Him.  The  best  way  of  expressing  this  relation  in  human 
language  is,  by  the  idea  of  physical  nearness.  They  were 
God's  angels.  Pursuing,  each  individual  among  them,  a  life 
of  his  own,  agreeable  to  his  wishes  and  his  character,  yet 
they  all  recognised  themselves  as  the  Almighty's  ministering 
spirits.  At  times  they  were  summoned,  from  following  their 
difierent  occupations  in  all  the  ends  of  Heaven,  to  assemble 
near  the  Divine  presence.  Among  these  angels  there  were 
degrees  and  differences.  Some  were  in  their  very  essence 
and  constitution  grander  and  more  sublime  intelligences  than 
the  rest;  others,  in  the  course  of  their  long  existence,  had 
become  noted  for  their  zeal  and  assiduity.     Tims,  although 


LUTHER'S,  Milton's,  and  goethe's.  63 

really  a  race  of  beings  living  on  their  own  account  as  men  do, 
they  constituted  a  hierarchy,  and  were  called  Angels. 

Among  all  the  vast  angelic  population,  three  or  four  indi- 
viduals stood  pre-eminent  and  unapproachable.     These  were 
the  Archangels.     Satan  was  one  of  these  :  if  not  the  highest 
archangel  in  heaven,  he  was  one  of  the  four  highest.     After 
God,  he  could  feel  conscious  of  being  the  greatest  being  in 
the  universe.     But  although  the  relation  between  the  Deity 
and  the  angelic  population  was  so  close,  that  we  can  only 
express  it  by  having  recourse  to  the  conception  of  physical 
nearness,  yet,  even  to  the  angels  the  Deity  was  so  shrouded 
in  clouds  and  mystery,  that  the  highest  archangel  might  pro- 
ceed on  a  wrong  notion  of  his  character  ;  and,  just  as  human 
beings   do,   might    believe    the    Divine    omnipotence   as   a 
theological  proposition,  and  yet,  in  going  about  his  enter- 
prises, might  not  carry  a  working  consciousness  of  it  along 
with  him.     There  is  something  in  the  exercise  of  power,  in 
the  mere  feeling  of  existence,  in  the  stretching  out  of  a  limb, 
in  the  resisting  of  an  obstacle,  in  being  active  in  any  way, 
which    generates   a   conviction    that   our   powers    are    self- 
contained,  hostile  to  the  recollection  of  inferiority  or  account- 
ability.    A  messenger,  employed  on  his  master's  business, 
becomes,  in  the  very  act  of  serving  him,  forgetful  of  him. 
As  the  feeling   of   enjoyment   in  action  grows   strong,  the 
feeling  of  a  dependent  state  of  being,  the  feeling  of  being  a 
messenger,  grows  weak.     Repose  and  physical  weakness  are 
favourable  to  the  recognition  of  a  derived  existence ;  hence 
the  beauty  of  the  feebleness  of  old  age  preceding  the  approach 
of  death.      The  feebleness  of  the  body  weakens   the   self- 
sufficient  feeling,  and  disposes  to   piety.     The  young  man, 
rejoicing  in  his  strength,  cannot  believe  that  his  breath  is  in 
his  nostrils.    In  some  such  way  the  Archangel  fell.    Rejoicing 
in  his  strength,  walking  colossal  through  heaven,  gigantic  in 
his  conceptions,   incessant   in   his   working,  ever   scheming, 
ever  imagining  new  enterprises,  Satan  was  in  his  very  nature 
the  most  active  of  God's  archangels.  He  was  ever  doing  some 
great  thing,  and  ever  thirsting  for  some  greater  thing  to  do. 
And,  alas !  his  very  wisdom  became  his  folly.     His  notion  of 


64  THE  THREE   DEVILS: 

the  Deity  was  higher  and  grander  than  that  of  any  other 
angel :  but,  then,  he  was  not  a  contemplative  spirit ;  and  his 
feeling  of  derived  existence  grew  weak  in  the  glow  and 
excitement  of  constant  occupation.  As  the  feeling  of  enjoy- 
ment in  action  grew  strong,  the  feeling  of  being  an  angel 
grew  weak.  Thus  the  mere  duration  of  his  existence  had 
undermined  his  strength  and  prepared  him  for  sin.  Although 
the  greatest  angel  in  heaven,  nay,  just  because  he  was  such, 
he  was  the  readiest  to  fall. 

At  last  an  occasion  came.  "When  the  intimation  was  made 
by  the  Almighty  in  the  congregation  of  the  angels  that  he 
had  anointed  his  only-begotten  Son  King  on  the  holy  hill  of 
Zion,  the  Archangel  frowned  and  became  a  rebel ;  not  because 
he  had  weighed  the  enterprise  to  which  he  was  committing 
himself,  but  because  he  was  hurried  on  by  the  impetus  of 
an  overwrought  nature.  Even  had  he  weighed  the  enter- 
prise, and  found  it  wanting,  he  would  have  been  a  rebel 
nevertheless  ;  he  would  have  rushed  into  ruin  on  the  wheels 
of  his  old  impulses.  He  could  not  have  said  to  himself, 
'*  It  is  useless  to  rebel,  and  I  will  not  f  and>  if  he  could,  what 
a  hypocrite  to  have  stayed  in  heaven !  No,  his  revolt  was 
the  natural  issue  of  the  thoughts  to  which  he  had  accustomed 
himself;  and  his  crime  lay  in  having  acquired  a  rebellious 
constitution,  in  having  pursued  action  too  much,  and  spm-ned 
worship  and  contemplation.  Herein  lay  the  difference 
between  him  and  the  other  archangels,  Eaphael,  Gabriel,  and 
Michael. 

Satan  in  his  revolt  carried  a  third  part  of  the  angels  along 
with  him.  He  had  accustomed  many  of  the  angels  to  his 
mode  of  thinking.  One  of  the  ways  in  which  he  gratified  his 
desire  for  activity  had  been  that  of  exerting  a  moral  and 
intellectual  influence  over  the  inferior  angels.  A  few  of  these 
he  had  liked  to  associate  with,  discoursing  with  them,  and 
observing  how  they  drank  in  his  ideas.  His  chief  associate, 
almost  his  bosom-companion,  had  been  Beelzebub,  a  princely 
angel.  Moloch,  Belial,  Mammon,  had  likewise  been  admitted 
to  his  confidence.  These  five  had  constituted  a  kind  of  clique 
in  heaven,  giving  the  word  to  a  whole  multitude  of  inferior 


I 


I 


Luther's,  milton's,  and  goethe's.  65 


angels,  all  of  them  resembling  their  leader,  in  being  fonder  of 
— action  than  of  contemplation.  Thus,  in  addition  to  the  mere 
hankering  after  action,  there  had  grown  up  in  Satan's  mind  a 
love  of  power.  This  feeling  of  its  being  a  glorious  thing  to 
^  be  a  leader  seems  to  have  had  much  to  do  with  his  voluntary 
sacrifice  of  happiness.  We  conceive  it  to  have  been  volun- 
tary. Foreseeing  ever  so  much  misery  would  not  have 
prevented  such  a  spirit  from  rebelling.  Having  a  third  of  the 
angels  away  with  him  in  some  dark,  howling  region,  where 
he  might  rule  over  them  alone,  would  have  seemed,  even  if  he 
had  foreseen  it,  infinitely  preferable  to  the  puny  sovereignty 
of  an  Archangel  in  that  world  of  gold  and  emerald — "  Better 
to  reign  in  hell  than  serve  in  heaven."  Thus  we  conceive 
him  to  have  faced  the  anticipation  of  the  future.  It  required 
little  persuasion  to  gain  over  the  kindred  spirit  of  Beelzebub. 
These  two  appear  to  have  conceived  the  enterprise  from  the 
beginning  in  a  different  light  from  that  in  which  they  repre- 
sented it  to  their  followers.  Happiness  witli  the  inferior 
spirits  was  a  more  important  consideration  than  with  such 
spirits  as  Satan  and  Beelzebub ;  and  to  have  hinted  the 
possibility  of  losing  happiness  in  the  enterprise,  would  have 
been  to  terrify  them  away.  Satan  and  Beelzebub  were  losing 
happiness  to  gain  something  which  they  thought  better ;  to 
the  inferior  angels  nothing  could  be  mentioned  that  would 
appear  better.  Again,  the  inferior  angels,  judging  from 
narrower  premises,  might  indulge  in  enthusiastic  expectations, 
which  the  greater  knowledge  of  the  leaders  would  prevent 
them  from  entertaining.  At  all  events,  the  effect  of  the  inter- 
course with  the  angels  was,  that  a  third  of  their  number 
joined  the  standard  of  Satan.  Then  began  the  wars  in 
heaven  related  in  the  sixth  book  of  the  poem. 

We  have  to  remark,  that  Satan's  carrying  on  these  wars 
with  the  hope  of  victory  is  not  inconsistent  with  what  we  have 
said,  as  to  the  possibility  of  Satan's  not  having  proceeded 
on  a  false  calculation.  We  are  apt  to  imagine  these  wars  as 
wars  between  the  rebel  angels  and  the  armies  of  God.  Now 
this  is  true ;  but  it  is  scarcely  the  proper  idea  in  the  circum- 
j      stances.     How  could  Satan  have  hoped  for  victory  in  that 

i  F 


66  THE  THREE   DEVILS  : 

case  ?  You  can  only  suppose  that  he  did  so  by  lessening  his 
intellect,  by  making  him  a  mere  blundering  Fury,  and  not  a 
keen,  far-seeing  Intelligence.  But  in  warring  with  Michael 
and  his  followers  he  was,  until  the  contrary  should  be  proved, 
warring  merely  against  his  fellow-beings  of  the  same  heaven, 
whose  strength  he  knew  and  feared  not.  The  idea  of  physical 
nearness  between  the  Almighty  and  the  angels  confuses  us 
here.  Satan  had  heard  the  threat  which  had  accompanied  the 
proclamation  of  the  Messiah's  sovereignty ;  but  it  may 
have  been  problematical  in  his  mind  whether  the  way  in 
which  God  would  fulfil  the  threat  would  be  to  make  Michael 
conquer  him.  So  he  made  war  against  Michael  and  his 
angels.  At  last,  when  all  Heaven  was  in  confusion,  the 
Divine  omnipotence  interfered.  On  the  third  day  the  Messiah 
rode  forth  in  his  strength  to  end  the  wars,  and  expel  the  rebel 
host  from  heaven.  They  fled,  driven  before  his  thunder. 
The  crystal  wall  of  heaven  opened  wide,  and  the  two  lips, 
rolling  inward,  disclosed  a  spacious  gap  yawning  into  the 
wasteful  deep  ;  the  reeling  angels  saw  down,  and  hung  back 
affrighted ;  but  the  terror  of  the  Lord  was  behind  them  ; 
headlong  they  threw  themselves  from  the  verge  of  Heaven 
into  the  fathomless  abyss,  eternal  wrath  burning  after  them 
down  through  the  blackness  like  a  hissing  fiery  funnel. 

And  now  the  Almighty  determined  to  create  a  new  kind  of 
world,  and  to  people  it  with  a  race  of  beings  different  from 
that  already  existing ;  inferior  in  the  meantime  to  the  angels, 
but  with  the  power  of  working  themselves  up  into  the  angelic 
mode  of  being.  The  Messiah,  girt  with  omnipotence,  rode 
out  on  this  creating  errand.  Heaven  opened  her  everlasting 
gates,  moving  on  their  golden  hinges,  and  the  King  of 
Glory,  uplifted  on  the  wings  of  cherubim,  rode  on  and  on 
into  Chaos.  At  last  he  stayed  his  fervid  wheels  and  took 
the  golden  compasses  in  his  hand.  Centering  one  point  where 
he  stood,  he  turned  the  other  silently  and  slowly  round 
through  the  profound  obscurity.  Thus  were  the  limits  of  our 
Universe  marked  out — that  azure  region  in  which  the  stars 
were  to  shine,  and  the  planets  were  to  wheel.  On  the  huge 
fragment   of    Chaos   thus   marked   out,   the   creating    spirit 


ii 


Luther's,  milton's,  and  goethe's.  67 

brooded,  and  the  light  gushed  down.  In  six  days  the  work 
of  creation  was  completed.  In  the  centre  of  the  azure 
universe  hung  a  silvery  star.  That  was  the  Earth.  Thereon 
in  a  paradise  of  trees  and  flowers  walked  Adam  and  Eve,  the 
last  and  the  fairest  of  all  God's  creatures. 

Meanwhile  the  rebel  host  lay  rolling  in  the  fiery  gulf  under- 
neath Chaos.  The  bottom  of  Chaos  was  Hell.  Above  it  was 
Chaos  proper,  a  thick,  black,  sweltering  element.  Above  it 
again  was  the  new  experimental  world,  cut  out  of  it  like  a 
mine,  and  brilliant  with  stars  and  galaxies.  And  high  over 
all,  behind  the  stars  and  galaxies,  was  Heaven  itself.  Satan 
and  his  crew  lay  rolling  in  Hell,  the  fiery  element  underneath 
Chaos.  Chaos  lay  between  them  and  the  new  world.  Satan 
was  the  first  to  awake  out  of  stupor  and  realise  the  whole  state 
of  the  case  ;  what  had  occurred,  what  was  to  be  their  future 
condition  of  being,  and  what  remained  to  be  attempted.  In 
the  first  dialogue  between  him  and  Beelzebub  we  see  that, 
even  thus  early,  he  had  ascertained  what  his  function  was  to 
be  for  the  future,  and  decided  in  what  precise  mode  of  being 
he  could  make  his  existence  most  pungent  and  perceptible. 

"  Of  this  be  sure, 
To  do  aught  good  never  will  be  our  task, 
But  ever  to  do  evil  our  sole  delight, 
As  being  the  contmry  to  His  high  will 
Whom  we  resist." 

Here  the  ruined  Archangel  first  strikes  out  the  idea  of  existing 
for  ever  after  as  the  Devil.  It  is  important  to  observe  that  his 
becoming  a  devil  was  not  the  mere  inevitable  consequence  of 
his  being  a  ruined  archangel.  Beelzebub,  for  instance,  could 
see  in  the  future  nothing  but  a  prospect  of  continued  suffering, 
until  Satan  communicated  to  him  his  conception  of  a  way  of 
enjoying  action  in  the  midst  of  suffering.  Again,  some  of 
the  angels  appear  to  have  been  ruminating  the  possibility  of 
retrieving  their  former  condition  by  patient  enduring.  The 
gigantic  scheme  of  becoming  aL_devil  w§,s  Satan's.  At  first  it 
existed  in  his  mind  only  as  a  vague  perception,  that  the  way 
in  which  he  would  be  most  likely  to  get  the  worth  out  of  his 
existence,  was  to  employ  himself  thenceforward  in  doing  evil. 
The  idea  afterwards  became  more  definite.     After  glancing 

f2  -^ 


68  THE  THKEE   DEVILS: 

round  their  new  domain,  Beelzebub  and  he  aroused  tlieir 
abject  followers.  In  the  speech  which  Satan  addresses  to 
them  after  they  had  all  mustered  in  order,  we  find  him  hint 
an  opening  into  a  new  career,  as  if  the  idea  had  just  occurred 
to  him : — 

"  Space  may  produce  new  worlds ;  whereof  so  rife 
There  went  a  fame  in  heaven  that  He  ere  long 
Intended  to  create,  and  therein  plant 
A  generation  whom  His  choice  regard 
Should  favour  equal  to  the  sons  of  heaven. 
Thither,  if  but  to  pry,  shall  be  perhaps 
Our  first  eruption." 

Here  is  an  advance  in  definiteness  upon  the  first  proposal ; 
that,  namely,  of  determining  to  spend  the  rest  of  existence  in 
doing  evil.  Casting  about  in  his  mind,  as  it  were,  for  some 
specific  opening,  Satan  had  recollected  the  talk  they  used  to 
have  in  Heaven  about  the  new  world  that  was  to  be  cut  out  of 
Chaos,  and  the  new  race  of  beings  that  was  to  be  created  to 
inhabit  it;  and  it  instantly  struck  his  scheming  fancy  that 
this  would  be  the  weak  point  of  the  universe.  If  he  could  but 
insert  the  wedge  here !  He  did  not,  however,  announce  the 
scheme  fully  at  the  moment,  but  went  on  thinking.  In  the 
council  of  gods  which  was  summoned,  some  advised  one  thing, 
some  another.  Moloch  was  for  open  war ;  Belial  had  great 
faith  in  the  force  of  circumstances ;  and  Mammon  was  for 
organising  their  new  kingdom,  so  as  to  make  it  as  comfort- 
able as  possible.  No  one,  however,  could  say  the  exact  thing 
that  was  wanted.  At  last  Beelzebub,  prompted  by  Satan, 
rose  and  detailed  the  project  of  their  great  leader: — 

"  There  is  a  place 
(If  ancient  and  prophetic  fame  in  heaven 
Err  not),  another  world,  the  happy  seat 
Of  some  new  race  call'd  Man,  about  this  time 
To  be  created  like  'co  us,  though  less 
In  power  and  excellence,  but  favour'd  more 
Of  Him  who  rules  above.     So  was  His  will 
Pronounced  among  the  gods,  and  by  an  oath 
That  shook  heaven's  whole  circumference  confirm'd. 
Thither  let  us  bend  all  our  thoughts  and  learn 
What  creatures  there  inhabit,  of  what  mould, 
Or  substance,  how  endued,  and  what  their  power 
And  where  their  weakness  :  how  attempted  best ; 
By  force  or  subtlety." 

This  was  Satan's  scheme.     The  more  he  had  thought  on  ifr^ 
the  more  did  it  recommend  itself  to  him.    It  was  more  feasible 


Luther's,  milton's,  and  goethe's.  69 

than  any  other.  It  held  out  an  indefinite  prospect  of  action. 
Moreover,  it  would  be  adding  another  fragment  of  the  universe 
to  Satan's  kingdom,  mingling  and  confounding  the  new  world 
with  Hell,  and  di'agging  down  the  new  race  of  beings  to  share 
the  perdition  of  the  old.  The  scheme  was  universally  ap- 
plauded by  the  angels;  who  seem  to  have  differed  from 
tlieir  leaders  in  this,  that  they  were  sanguine  of  being  able  to 
better  their  condition,  whereas  their  leaders  sought  only  the 
gratification  of  their  desire  of  action. 

The  question  next  was,  Who  would  venture  out  of  Hell  to 
explore  the  way  to  the  new  world  ?  Satan  volunteered  the 
perilous  excursion.  Immediately  putting  on  his  swiftest  wings, 
he  directs  his  solitary  flight  towards  Hell-gate,  where  sat  Sin 
and  Death.  When,  at  length,  the  gate  was  opened  to  give 
him  exit,  it  was  like  a  huge  furnace-mouth,  vomiting  forth 
smoke  and  flames  into  the  womb  of  Chaos.  Issuing  thence, 
Satan  spread  his  sail-broad  wings  for  flight,  and  began  his 
toilsome  way  upward,  half  on  foot,  half  on  wing,  swimming, 
sinking,  wading,  climbing,  flying,  through  the  thick  and 
turbid  element.  At  last  he  emerged  out  of  Chaos  into  the 
light  of  the  new  Universe.  Winging  leisurely  now  through 
the  balmy  ether,  he  looked  upward  to  the  deep  soft  azure 
powdered  with  stars.  Upward  and  upward  still  he  flew,  till, 
high  in  the  distance,  he  discerned  his  former  home  with  its 
opal  towers  and  sapphire  battlements,  and,  hanging  thence  by 
a  golden  chain,  our  little  world,  with  the  moon  by  her  side. 

When  Satan  arrived  in  the  new  creation,  the  whole  phe- 
nomenon was  strange  to  him,  and  he  had  no  idea  what  kind 
of  a  being  Man  was.  He  asked  Uriel,  whom  he  found  there 
fulfilling  some  Divine  errand,  in  which  of  all  the  shining  orbs 
round  him  Man  had  his  fixed  seat ;  or  whether  he  had  a  fixed 
seat  at  all,  and  was  not  at  liberty  to  shift  his  residence,  and 
dwell  now  in  one  star,  now  in  another.  Uriel,  deceived  by 
the  appearance  which  Satan  had  assumed,  points  out  the  way 
to  Paradise. 
V^'  Alighting  on  the  surface  of  the  new  world,  Satan  walks 
/about  immersed  in  thought.  Heaven's  gate  was  in  view. 
Overhead  and  round  him  were  the  quiet  hills  and  the  green 


70  THE  THREE   DEVILS: 

fields.  Oh,  what  an  errand  he  had  come  upon !  His  thoughts 
were  sad  and  noble.  Fallen  as  he  was,  all  the  Archangel 
stirred  within  him.  Oh,  had  he  not  been  made  so  high,  he 
should  never  have  fallen  so  low !  Is  there  no  hope  even  now, 
no  room  for  repentance  ?  Such  were  his  first  thoughts.  But 
he  roused  himself  and  shook  them  off.  ^'  The  past  is  gone 
and  away ;  it  is  to  the  future  that  I  must  look.  Perish  the 
days  of  my  Archangelship  !  perish  the  name  of  Archangel ! 
Such  is  my  name  no  longer.  My  future,  if  less  happy,  shall 
be  more  glorious.  Ah,  and  this  is  the  world  I  have  singled 
out  for  my  experiment !  Formerly,  in  the  days  of  my  arch- 
angelship, I  ranged  at  will  through  infinity,  doing  one  thing 
here  and  another  there.  Now  I  mustjiontract  the  sphere  of 
my  activity,  and  labour  nowhere  but  here.  But  it  is  better 
to  apply  myself  to  the  task  of  thoroughly  impregnating  one 
point  of  space  with  my  presence  than  to  go  flapping  my  wings 
vaguely  all  through  the  universe.  Ah,  but  may  not  my  nature 
suffer  by  the  change?  In  thus  selecting  a  specific  aim,  in 
thus  concerning  myself  exclusively  with  one  point  of  space, 
and  forswearing  all  interest  in  the  innumerable  glorious  things 
that  may  be  happening  out  of  it,  shall  I  not  run  the  risk  of 
degenerating  into  a  smaller  and  meaner  being  ?  In  the  course 
of  ages  of  dealing  with  the  puny  offspring  of  these  new  beings, 
may  I  not  dwindle  down  into  a  mere  pungent,  pettifogging- 
spirit?  What  would  Raphael,  Gabriel,  and  Michael  say, 
were  they  to  see  their  old  co-mate  changed  into  such  a  being  ? 
But  be  it  so.  If  I  cannot  cope  with  the  Almighty  on  the 
grand  scale  of  infinity,  I  shall,  at  least,  make  my  existence 
felt  by  opposing  his  plans  respecting  this  new  race  of  beings. 
Besides,  by  beginning  with  this,  I  may  w^orm  my  way  to  a 
more  effective  position  in  the  universe.  At  all  events,  I  shall 
have  a  scheme  on  hand,  and  be  incessantly  occupied.  And, 
as  time  makes  the  occupation  more  congenial,  if  I  do  become  less 
magnanimous,  I  shall,  at  the  same  time,  become  happier.  And, 
whether  my  fears  on  this  point  are  visionary  or  not,  it  will,  at 
least,  be  a  noble  thing  to  have  it  to  say  that  I  have  raised  a 
whirlpool  that  shall  suck  down  generation  after  generation  of 
these  new  beings,  before  their  Maker's  eyes,  into  the  same 


I 


lutheb's,  Milton's,  and  goethe's.  71 

wretched  condition  of  being  to  whicli  He  has  doomed  us.  It 
will  be  something  so  to  vitiate  the  universe,  that,  let  Him 
create,  create  on  as  he  chooses,  it  may  be  like  pouring  water 
into  a  broken  vessel." 

In  the  very  course  of  this  train  of  thinking,  Satan  begins  to 
degenerate  into  a  meaner  being.  He  is  on  the  very  threshold 
of  that  career,  on  which  having  fully  entered,  he  will  cease 
for  ever  to  be  the  Archangel  and  become  irrevocably  the 
Devil.  The  very  manner  in  which  he  tempts  our  first  parents 
is  devil-like.  It  is  in  the  shape  of  a  cormorant  on  a  tree  that 
he  sits  watching  his  victims.  He  sat  at  the  ear  of  Eve, 
"  squat  like  a  toad."  It  was  in  the  shape  of  a  serpent  that 
he  tempted  her.  And  when  the  evil  was  done,  he  slunk  away 
through  the  brushwood.  In  the  very  act  of  ruining  man  he 
committed  himself  to  a  life  of  ignominious  activity, — he  was 
to  go  on  his  belly  and  eat  dust  all  his  days. 

Such  is  the  story  of  Milton's  Satan.  It  will  be  easy  to 
express  more  precisely  the  idea  which  we  have  acquired  of 
him,  when  we  come  to  contrast  him  with  Goethe's  Mephis- 
topheles.  Meanwhile,  with  regard  to  Goethe's  Mephisto- 
pheles,  we  shall  be  much  assisted  in  our  efforts  to  conceive 
him  by  keeping  in  mind  what  we  have  been  saying  about  Satan. 

We  do  not  think  it  possible  to  sum  up,  in  a  single  ex- 
pression, all  that  Goethe  meant  to  signify  by  his  Mephisto- 
pheles.  For  one  thing,  it  is  questionable  whether  Goethe 
kept  strictly  working  out  one  specific  meaning,  and  making  it 
clearer  all  through  Mephistopheles's  gambols  and  devilries; 
or  whether,  having,  once  for  all,  allegorised  the  Spirit  of  Evil 
into  a  living  personage,  he  did  not  treat  him  just  as  he  would 
liave  any  other  of  his  characters,  making  him  always  consis- 
tent, always  diabolic,  but  nowise  intent  upon  making  his 
actions  run  parallel  to  any  under-current  of  exposition.  The 
way  to  proceed,  therefore,  is  to  treat  Mephistopheles  as  a  cha- 
racter in  a  drama,  which  we  wish  to  study.  Now  it  strikes 
us  that  we  shall  be  on  the  right  track  if,  in  the  first  place,  we 
establish  a  relation  between  Satan  and  Mephistopheles,  by 
adopting  the  notion  which  we  have  imagined  Satan  himself 


72  THE   THREE   DEVILS: 

entertained  when  engaged  in  scheming  out  his  future  life,  and 
supposing  Mephistopheles  to  be  what  Satan  has  become  in 
six  thousand  years.  Milton's  Satan,  then,  is  the  ruined  Arch- 
angel deciding  his  future  function,  and  forswearing  all  interest 
in  other  regions  of  the  universe,  in  order  that  he  might  more 
thoroughly  possess  and  impregnate  this.  Goethe's  Mephisto- 
pheles is  this  same  being  after  the  toils  and  vicissitudes  of  six 
thousand  years  in  his  new  vocation ;  smaller,  meaner,  ignobler, 
but  a  million  times  sharper  and  cleverer.  As  a  kind  of  cor- 
roboration of  this  view,  we  may  refer,  in  passing,  to  the  Satan 
of  the  Paradise  Regained;  who,  though  still  a  sublime  and 
Miltonic  being,  dealing  in  high  thoughts  and  high  arguments, 
yet  seems  to  betray,  in  his  demeanour,  tie  effects  of  four 
thousand  years  spent  in  a  new  walk.  Is  there  not  something 
Mephistopheles-like,  -  for  instance,  in  the  description  of  the 
fiend's  appearance  when  he  approached  Christ  to  begin  his 
temptation?  Christ  was  walking  alone  and  thoughtful  one 
evening  in  the  thick  of  the  forest  where  he  had  lived  fasting 
forty  days,  when  he  heard  the  dry  twigs  behind  him  snapping 
beneath  approaching  footsteps.     He  turned  round,  and 

"  An  aged  man  in  rural  weeds, 
Following  as  seem'd  the  quest  of  some  stray  ewe, 
Or  wither'd  sticks  to  gather,  which  might  serve 
Against  a  winter's  day  when  winds  blow  keen 
To  warm  him,  wet  return'd  from  field  at  eve. 
He  saw  approach ;  who  first  with  curious  eye 
Perused  him,  then  with  words  thus  utter'd  spake." 

Observe  how  all  the  particulars  of  this  description  are  drawn, 
as  it  were,  out  of  the  very  thick  of  the  civilization  of  the  past 
four  thousand  years,  and  how  the  whole  effect  of  the  picture  is 
to  suggest  a  Mephistophelic-looking  man,  whom  it  would  be 
disagreeable  to  meet  alone.  In  fact,  if  we  had  space,  we 
could  make  more  use  of  the  Paradise  Regained^  as  exhibiting 
the  transition  of  Satan  into  Mephistopheles.  But  we  must 
pass  at  once  to  Goethe. 

Viewing  Mephistopheles  in  the  proposed  light  (of  course  we 
do  not  pretend  that  Goethe  himself  had  any  such  idea  about  his 
Mephistopheles),  a  great  deal  of  insight  is  to  be  derived  from 
the  *'  Prologue  in  Heaven."  For  here  we  have  Mephistopheles 
out  of  his  element,  and  contrasted  with  his  old  co-equals.    The 


Luther's,  milton's,  and  goethe's.  73 

scene  is  Miltonic.  The  lieavenly  hosts  are  assembled  round 
the  throne,  and  the  tliree  Archangels,  Eaphael,  Gabriel,  and 
Michael,  come  forward  to  praise  the  Lord.  The  theme  of 
their  song  is  Creation  ;  not,  as  it  would  have  been  in  Milton, 
as  an  event  about  to  take  place,  and  which  would  vary  the 
monotony  of  the  universe,  but  as  a  thing  existing  and  grandly 
going  on.  It  is  to  be  noted,  too,  that  while  Milton  appeals 
chiefly  to  the  sight,  and  is  clear  and  coherent  in  his  imagery, 
Goethe  produces  a  similar  effect  in  his  own  manner  by  ap- 
pealing to  sight  and  hearing  simultaneously,  making  sounds 
and  metaphors  dance  and  whirl  througli  each  other  as  in  a 
wild,  indistinct,  but  overpowering  dream.  Eaphael  describes 
the  Sun  rolling  on  in  thunder  through  the  heavens,  singing  in 
chorus  with  the  kindred  stars.  Gabriel  describes  the  Earth 
revolving  on  its  axis,  one  hemisphere  glittering  in  the  light, 
the  other  dipped  in  shadow.  Michael  in  continuation  sings 
of  the  ensphering  atmosphere  and  the  storms  that  rage  in  it, 
darting  forth  tongues  of  lightning,  and  howling  in  gusts  over 
land  and  sea.  And  then  the  three  burst  forth  in  symphony, 
exulting  in  their  nature  as  beings  deriving  strength  from 
serene  contemplation,  and  proclaiming  all  God's  works  to  be 
as  bright  and  glorious  as  on  the  day  they  were  created. 
Suddenly,  while  Heaven  is  still  thrilling  to  the  grand  undu- 
lation, another  voice  breaks  in : 

"  Da  du,  0  Herr,  dich  einmal  wieder  nahst, 
Und  fragst  wie  alles  sich  bei  uns  befinde, 
Und  du  mich  sonst  gewohnlich  gerne  sahst ; 
So  siebst  du  mich  aucb  unter  dem  Gesinde," 

Ugh !  what  a  discord  !  The  tone,  the  voice,  the  words,  the 
very  metre,  so  horribly  out  of  tune  with  what  had  gone  before  ! 
Mephistopheles  is  the  speaker.  He  has  been  standing  behind, 
looking  about  him  and  listening  with  a  sarcastic  air  to  the 
song  of  the  Archangels ;  and  when  they  have  done  he  thinks 
it  his  turn  to  speak,  and  immediately  begins.  (We  give  the 
passage  in  translation). 

"  Since  thou,  0  Lord,  approachest  us  once  more. 
And  askest  how  affairs  with  us  are  going, 
And  commonly  hast  seen  me  here  before, 

To  this  my  presence  'mid  these  Gents  is  owing. 


74  THE  THREE   DEVILS: 

Excuse  my  plainness ;  I'm  no  hand  at  chaffing  ; 

I  canH  talk  fine,  though  all  around  should  scorn ; 
My  pathos  certainly  would  set  thee  laughing. 

Hadst  thou  not  laughter  long  ago  forborne. 
Of  suns  and  worlds  deuce  one  word  can  /  gabble, 
I  only  know  how  men  grow  miserable, 
The  little  God  of  Earth  is  still  the  same  old  clay, 
And  is  as  odd  this  hour  as  on  Creation's  day. 
Better  somewhat  his  situation 

Hadst  thou  not  given  him  that  same  light  of  inspiration, 
Reason  he  calls  't  and  uses  't  so  that  he 
Grows  but  more  beastly  than  the  beasts  to  be ; 
He  seems  to  me,  begging  your  Grace's  pardon, 
Like  one  of  those  long-legg'd  things  in  a  garden, 
That  fly  about  and  hop  and  spring 
And  in  the  grass  the  same  old  chirrup  sing. 
Would  I  could  say  that  here  the  story  closes  ! 
But  in  each  filthy  mess  they  thrust  their  noses." 

And  so  shameless,  and  at  the  same  time  so  voluble  is  he, 
that  he  would  go  on  longer  in  the  same  strain  did  not  the 
Lord  interrupt  him. 

Now  this  speech  both  announces  and  exhibits  Mephisto- 
pheles's  nature.  Without  even  knowing  German,  one  could 
hardly  hear  the  original  read  as  Mephistopheles's  without 
seeing  in  it  shamelessness,  impudence,  volubility,  cleverness ; 
a  sneering,  sarcastic  disposition ;  want  of  heart,  want  of  senti- 
ment, want  of  earnestness,  want  of  purpose ;  complete,  con- 
firmed, irrevocable  devilishness.  And  besides,  Mephistopheles 
candidly  describes  himself  in  it.  When,  in  sly  and  sarcastic 
allusion  to  the  song  of  the  Archangel,  he  tells  that  he  has  not 
the  gift  of  talking  fine,  he  announces  in  effect  that  he  is  not 
going  to  be  Miltonic.  He  is  not  going  to  speak  of  suns  and 
universes,  he  says.  Kaphael,  Gabriel,  and  Michael,  are  at 
home  in  that  sort  of  thing ;  but  he  is  not.  Leaving  >them, 
therefore,  to  tell  how  the  universe  is  flourishing  on  the  grand 
scale,  and  how  the  suns  and  the  planets  are  going  on  as  beau- 
tifully as  ever,  he  will  just  say  a  word  or  two  as  to  how 
human  nature  is  getting  on  down  yonder ;  and,  to  be  sure,  if 
comparison  be  the  order  of  the  day,  the  little  godkin,  Man,  is 
quite  as  odd  as  on  the  day  he  was  made.  And  forthwith, 
with  astounding  impudence,  he  launches  into  a  train  of 
remark,  the  purport  of  which  is  that  every  thing  down  below 
is  at  sixes  and  sevens,  and  that  in  his  opinion  human  nature 
has  turned  out  a  failure.     And,  heedless  of  the  disgust  of  his 


LUTHER'S,  Milton's,  and  goethe's. 


75 


audience,  he  would  go  on  talking  for  ever,  were  lie  not 
interrupted. 

And  is  this  the  Satan  of  the  Paradise  Lost  ?  Is  this  the 
Archangel  ruined  ?  Is  this  the  being  who  warred  against  the 
Almighty,  who  lay  floating  many  a  rood,  who  shot  upwards 
like  a  pyramid  of  fire,  who  navigated  space  wherever  he 
chose,  speeding  on  his  errands  from  star  to  star,  and  who 
finally  conceived  the  gigantic  scheme  of  assaulting  the  uni- 
verse where  it  was  weakest,  and  impregnating  the  new  crea- 
tion with  the  venom  of  his  spirit?  Yes,  it  is  he;  but  oh, 
how  changed !  For  six  thousand  years  he  has  been  pursuing 
the  walk  he  struck  out  at  the  beginning,  plying  his  self- 
selected  function,  dabbling  devilishly  in  human  nature,  and 
abjuring  all  interest  in  the  grander  physics ;  and  the  conse- 
quence is,  as  he  himself  anticipated,  that  his  nature,  once 
great  and  magnificent,  has  become  small,  virulent,  and 
shrunken, 

"  Subdued 
To  what  it  works  in,  like  the  dyer's  hand." 

As  if  he  had  been  journeying  through  "a  wilderness  of  scorch- 
ing sand,  all  that  was  left  of  the  Archangel  has  long  since 
evaporated.  He  is  now  a  dry,  cold,  shrivelled-up,  scoffing 
spirit.  "When,  at  the  moment  of  scheming  out  his  future 
existence  and  determining  to  become  a  Devil,  he  anticipated 
the  ruin  of  his  nature,  he  could  not  help  thinking  with  what 
a  strange  feeling  he  should  then  appear  before  his  old  co-equals, 
Raphael,  Gabriel,  and  Michael.  But  now  he  stands  before 
them  disgustingly  unabashed,  almost  ostentatious  of  not  being 
any  longer  an  Archangel.  Even  in  the  days  of  his  glory  he 
was  different  from  them.  They  luxuriated  in  contemplation ; 
he  in  the  feeling  of  innate  all-sufficient  vigour.  And  lo,  now ! 
They  are  unchanged,  the  servants  of  the  Lord,  revering  the 
day's  gentle  going.     He,  the  scheming,  enthusiastic  Arch- 

;n  soured  and  civilised  into  the  clever  cold- 

>topheles. 
)pheles  is  the  Spirit  of  JEvil'in  modern  society, 
illustrationof  this  spirit's  workingju^the' 
The  case  selectedr4s'anoble  one 


76  THE  THREE   DEVILS: 

Faust,  a  man  of  grand  and  restless  nature,  is  aspiring  after 
universality  of  feeling.  Utterly  dissatisfied  and  disgusted 
with  all  human  method  and  all  human  acquisition,  nay, 
fretting  at  the  constitution  of  human  nature  itself,  he  longs 
to  spill  out  his  soul,  so  that,  mingling  with  the  winds,  it  may 
become  a  part  of  the  ever-thrilling  spirit  of  the  universe  and 
know  the  essence  of  everything.  He  has  been  contemplating 
suicide.  To  this  grand  nature  struggling  with  itself  Mephis- 
topheles  is  linked.  It  is  to  be  noted  that  throughout  the 
whole  drama  there  is  no  evidence  of  its  being  an  object  of 
very  earnest  solicitude  with  Mephistopheles  to  gain  possession 
of  the  soul  of  Faust.  Of  course,  he  desired  this,  and  had  it 
in  view.  Thus,  he  exacted  a  bond  from  Faust ;  and  we  find 
him  also  now  and  then  chuckling  when  alone  in  anticipation 
of  Faust's  ultimate  ruin.  But  on  the  whole  he  is  constant  to 
no  earnest  plan  for  efiecting  it.  In  fact,  he  is  constant  to  no 
single  purpose  whatever.  The  desire  of  doing  devilry  is  his 
motive  all  through.  Going  about  with  Faust  was  just  being 
in  the  way  of  business,  and  having  a  companion  at  the 
same  time.  He  studies  his  own  gratification,  not  Faust's,  in 
all  that  he  does.  Faust  never  gets  what  he  had  a  right  to 
expect  from  him.  He  is  dragged  hither  and  thither  through 
scenes  he  has  no  anxiety  to  be  in,  merely  that  Mephistopheles 
may  enjoy  some  new  and  piquant  piece  of  devilry.  The 
moment  he  and  Faust  enter  any  place,  he  quits  Faust's  side 
and  mixes  with  the  persons  present,  to  do  some  mischief  or 
other ;  and,  when  it  is  done,  he  comes  back  to  Faust,  who  has 
been  standing,  with  his  arms  folded,  gloomily  looking  on, 
and  asks  him  if  he  could  desire  any  better  amusement  than 
this.  Now  this  is  not  the  conduct  of  a  devil  intent  upon 
nothing  so  much  as  gaining  possession,  of  the  soul  of  his 
victim.  A  Mil  tonic  devil  would  have  pressed  on  to  the  mark 
more.  He  would  have  been  more  self-denying,  and  would 
have  kept  his  victim  in  better  humour.  But  Mephistopheles 
is  a  devil  to  the  very  core.  He  is  a  .devil  in  his  conduct  to 
Faust.  What  he  studies  is  not  to  gratify  Faust,  but  to  find 
plenty  of  congenial  occupation  for  himself;  to  perpetrate  as 
great  a  quantity  of  evil  as  possible  in  as  short  a  time  as 


Luther's,  milton's,  and  goethe's.  77 

possible.  It  seems  capable  of  being  inferred  from  this  pecu- 
liarity in  the  character  of  Mephistopheles,  that  Goethe  had 
in  his  mind  all  through  the  poem  a  certain  under-current  of 
allegoric  meaning.  One  sees  that  Mephistopheles,  though 
acting  as  a  dramatic  personage,  represents  an  abstract  some- 
thing or  other. 

The  character  of  Mephistopheles  is  brought  out  all  through 
the  drama.  In  the  first  and-  second  parts  we  have  Faust  and 
him  brought  into  a  great  variety  of  situations  and  into 
contact  with  a  gi'eat  variety  of  individuals ;  and  in  watching 
how  Mephistopheles  conducts  himself  in  these  we  obtain 
more  and  more  insight  into  his  devilish  nature.  He  mani- 
tests  himself  in  two  ways — by  his  style  of  speaking,  and 
by  his  style  of  acting.  That  is  to  say,  Mephistopheles,  in  the 
first  place,  has  a  habit  of  making  observations  upon  all  sub- 
jects, and  throwing  out  all  kinds  of  general  propositions  in 
the  course  of  his  conversation,  and  by  attending  to  the  spirit 
of  these  one  can  perceive  very  distinctly  his  mode  of  looking 
at  things;  and,  in  the  second  place,  he  acts  a  part  in  the 
drama,  and  this  part,  is,  of  course,  characteristic. 

The  distinguishing  feature  in  Mephistopheles 's  conversation 
is  the  amazing  intimacy  which  it  displays  with  all  the  con- 
ceivable ways  in  which  crime  can  be  perpetrated.  There  is 
positively  not  a  wrong  thing  that  people  are  in  the  habit  of 
doing  that  he  does  not  seem  to  be  aware  of.  He  is  profound 
in  his  acquaintance  with  iniquity.  If  there  is  a  pin  loose 
anywhere  in  society,  he  knows  of  it ;  if  the  afikirs  of  the  State 
are  going  into  confusion,  owing  to  some  blockhead's  misma- 
nagement, he  knows  of  it.  He  is  versed  in  all  the  forms  of 
professional  quackery.  He  knows  how  pedants  hoodwink 
people,  how  priests  act  the  hypocrite,  how  physicians  act  the 
rake,  how  lawyers  peculate.  In  all  sorts  of  police  information 
he  is  a  perfect  Fouch^.  He  has  gone  deep  enough  into  the 
subject  to  be  able  to  write  a  book  equal  to  Duchatelet's.  And 
not  only  has  he  accumulated  a  mass  of  observations,  but  he 
has  generalised  those  observations,  and  marked  evil  in  its 
grand  educational  sources.  If  the  human  mind  be  going  out 
into   a  hopeless  track   of  speculation,  he  has  observed  and 


78  THE  THREE  DEVILS: 

knows  it.  If  the  universities  be  frittering  away  the  intellect 
of  the  youth  of  a  country  in  useless  and  barren  studies,  he 
knows  it.  If  atheistic  politicians  are  vehemently  defending 
the  religious  institutions  of  a  country,  he  has  marked  the 
prognostication.  Whatever  promises  to  inflict  misery,  to  lead 
people  astray,  to  break  up  beneficial  alliances,  to  make  men 
flounder  on  in  error,  to  cause  them  to  die  blaspheming  at  the 
last,  he  is  thoroughly  cognisant  of  it  all.  He  could  draw  up 
a  catalogue  of  social  vices.  He  could  point  out  the  specific 
existing  grievances  to  which  the  disorganisation  of  a  people  is 
owing,  and  lay  his  finger  on  the  exact  parent  evils  which  the 
philanthropist  ought  to  exert  himself  in  exposing  and  making 
away  with.  But  here  lies  the  diabolical  peculiarity  of  his 
knowledge.  It  is  not  in  the  spirit  of  a  philanthropist  that  he 
has  accumulated  his  information ;  it  is  in  the  spirit  of  a  devil. 
It  is  not  with  the  benevolent  motive  of  a  Duchatelet  that  he 
has  descended  into  the  lurking-places  of  iniquity ;  it  is  because 
he  delights  in  knowing  the  whole  extent  of  human  misery. 
The  doing  of  evil  being  his  fmiction,  it  is  but  natural  that  he 
should  have  a  taste  for  going  into  the  details  of  his  own  pro- 
fession. Nay  more,  as  the  Spirit  of  all  evil,  who  had  been 
working  from  the  beginnin-g,  how  could  he  fail  to  be  acquainted 
with  all  the  existing  varieties  of  criminal  occupation  ?  It  is 
but  as  if  he  kept  a  diary.  Now,  in  this  combination  of  the 
knowledge  of  evil,  with  the  desire  of  producing  it,  lies  the 
very  essence  of  his  character.  The  combination  is  horrible, 
unnatural,  unhuman.  Generally  the  motive  to  investigate 
deeply  into  what  is  wrong  is  the  desire  to  rectify  it ;  and  it 
is  rarely  that  profligates  possess  very  valuable  information. 
But  in  every  one  of  Mephistopheles's  speeches  there  is  some 
profound  glimpse  into  the  rottenness  of  society,  some  masterly 
specification  of  an  evil  that  ought  to  be  rooted  out ;  and  yet 
there  is  not  one  of  those  speeches  in  which  the  language  is 
not  flippant  and  sarcastic,  not  one  in  which  the  tone  is  sor- 
rowful or  philanthropic.  Everything  is  going  wrong  in  the 
world  ;  twaddle  and  quackery  everywhere  abounding ;  nothing 
to  be  seen  under  the  sun  but  hypocritical  priests,  sharking 
attorneys,  unfaithful  wives,  children  crying  for  bread  to  eat, 


Luther's,  milton's,  and  goethe's.  79 

men  and  women  cheating,  robbing,  murdering  eacli  other ! 
Hurrah !  This  is  exactly  a  burst  of  Mephistophelic  feeling. 
In  fact  it  is  an  intellectual  defect  in  Mephistopheles,  that  his 
having  such  an  eye  for  evil  and  his  taking  such  an  interest  in 
it,  prevent  his  allowing  anything  for  good  in  his  calculations. 
To  Mephistopheles  the  world  seems  going  to  perdition  as  fast 
as  it  can ;  while  in  the  same  universal  confusion,  beings  like 
the  Archangels  recognise  the  good  struggling  with  the  evil. 

Respecting  the  part  which  Mephistopheles  performs  in  the 
drama  we  have  already  said  something.  Going  about  the 
world,  linked  to  Faust,  is  to  him  only  a  racy  way  of  acting 
the  devil.  Having  as  his  companion  a  man  so  flighty  in  his 
notions  would  increase  the  flavour  of  whatever  he  engaged  in. 
All  through  he  is  laughing  in  his  sleeve  at  Faust,  and  deriving 
a  keen  enjoyment  from  his  transcendental  style  of  thinking. 
Faust's  noble  qualities  are  all  Greek  and  Gaelic  to  his  cold 
and  devilish  nature.  He  has  a  contempt  for  all  strong  feeling, 
all  sentiment,  all  evangelism.  He  enjoys  the  Mil  tonic  vastly. 
Thus  in  the  "  Prologue  in  Heaven"  he  quizzes  the  archangels 
about  the  grandiloquence  of  their  song.  Not  that  he  does  not 
understand  that  sort  of  thing  intellectually,  but  that  it  is  not 
in  his  natm'e  to  sympathise  with  anything  like  sentiment. 
Hence,  when  he  assumes  the  sentimental  himself  and  mimicks 
any  lofty  strain,  although  he  does  it  full  justice  in  as  far  as 
giving  the  whole  intellectual  extent  of  meaning  is  concerned, 
yet  he  always  does  so  in  words  so  inappropriate  emotionally 
that  the  effect  is  a  parody.  He  must  have  found  amusement 
enough  in  Faust's  company  to  have  reconciled  him  in  some 

^rfaeasure  to  losing  him  Anally. 

^f  But  to  go  on.  Mephistopheles  acts  the  devil  all  through. 
In  the  first  place  he  acts  the  devil  to  Faust  himself,  for  he  is 
continually  taking  his  own  way  and  starting  difficulties 
whenever  Faust  proposes  anything.  Then  again  in  his  con- 
duct towards  the  other  principal  personages  of  the  drama  it  is 
the  same.  In  the  murder  of  poor  Margaret,  her  mother,  her 
child,  and  her  brother,  we  have  as  fiendish  a  series  of  acts  as 
devil  could  be  supposed  capable  of  perpetrating.  And  lastly, 
in  the  mere  filling  up  and  side  play,  it  is  the  same.     He  is 


80  THE   THREE   DEVILS: 

constantly  doing  unnecessary  mischief.  If  lie  enters  Auer- 
bach's  wine-cellar  and  introduces  himself  to  the  four  drinking 
companions,  it  is  to  set  the  poor  brutes  fighting  and  make 
them  cut  off  each  other's  noses.  If  he  spends  a  few  minutes 
in  talk  with  Martha,  it  is  to  make  the  silly  old  woman  expose 
her  foibles.  The  second  part  of  Faust  is  devilry  all  through, 
a  tissue  of  bewilderments  and  devilries.  And  while  doing  all 
this  Mephistopheles  is  still  the  same  cold,  self-possessed, 
sarcastic  being.  If  he  exhibit  any  emotion  at  all,  it  is  a  kind 
of  devilish  anger.  Perhaps,  too,  once  or  twice  we  recognise 
something  like  terror  or  flurry.  But  on  the  whole  he  is  a 
spirit  bereft  of  feeling.  What  could  indicate  the  heart  of  a 
devil  more  than  his  words  to  Faust  in  the  harrowing  prison- 


scene 


9 


"  Komm,  komm,  ich  lasse  dich  mit  ihr  im  Stich." 


And  now  for  a  word  or  two  cdescribing  Milton's  Satan  and 
Goethe's  Mephistopheles  by  each  other : — Satan  is  a  colossal  1 
figure ;  Mephistopheles   an  elaborated  portrait.     Satan  is  an  ^ 
Archangel  scheming  his  future  existence ;  Mephistopheles  is 
the  modern  Spirit  of  evil.     Mephistopheles  has  a  distinctly 
marked  physiognomy ;  Satan  has  not.     Satan  has  a  sympa-  i 
tlietic  knowledge  of  good ;  Mephistopheles  knows  good  only 
as  a  phenomenon.    Much  of  what  Satan  says  might  be  spoken  / 
by  Raphael ;  a  devilish  spirit  runs  through  all  that  Mephi- 
stopheles says.    Satan's  bad  actions  are  preceded  by  noble// 
reasonings ;    Mephistopheles  does   not  reason.     Satan^s  bad  f; 
actions  are   followed   by  compunctious  visitings;  Mephisto- 
pheles never  repents.     Satan  is  often  "inly  racked  ;"  Mephi-  /' 
stopheles  can  feel  nothing  more  noble  than  disappointment. 
!  Satan   conducts    an    enterprise;    Mephistopheles   enjoys   an 
/  occupation.     Satan  has  strength  of  purpose ;  Mephistopheles 
J  is  volatile.     Satan  feels  anxiety ;  Mephistopheles  lets  things 
(  happen.    Satan's  greatness  lies  in  the  vastness  of  his  motives ; 
Mephistopheles' s  in  his  intimate  acquaintance  with  everything. 
J  Satan   has  a  few  sublime  conceptions ;    Mephistopheles  has 
accumulated  a  mass  of  observations.    Satan  declaims ;  Mephi- 
stopheles puts  in  remarks.     Satan  is   conversant    with  the 
moral  aspects  of  things  and  uses  adjectives ;  Mephistopheles 


LUTHER'S,   MILTON'S,   AND   GOETHE'S.  8l 

has  a  preference  for  nouns,  and  uses  adjectives  only  to  convey 
significations  which  he  knows  to  exist.  Satan  may  end  in 
being  a  devil ;  Mephistopheles  is  a  devil  irrecoverably. 

Milton's  Satan  and  Goethe's  Mephistopheles  are  literary 
performances ;  and,  for  what  they  prove,  neither  Milton  nor 
Goethe  need  have  believed  in  a  Devil  at  all.  Luther's  Devil, 
on  the  other  hand,  was  a  being  recognised  by  him  as  actually 
existing ;  as  existing,  we  might  say,  with  a  vengeance.  The 
strong  conviction  which  Luther  had  on  this  point  is  a  feature 
in  his  character.  The  narrative  of  his  life  abounds  in  anec- 
dotes, showing  that  the  Devil  with  him  was  no  chimera,  no 
mere  orthodoxy,  no  fiction.  In  every  page  of  his  writings 
we  have  the  word  Teufel,  Teufel,  repeated  again  and  again. 
Occasionally  there  occurs  an  express  dissertation  upon  the 
nature  and  function  of  the  Evil  Spirit ;  and  one  of  the  longest 
chapters  in  his  Table  Talk  is  that  entitled  "  The  Devil  and 
his  Works  " — indicating  that  his  conversation  with  his  friends 
often  turned  on  the  subject  of  Satanic  agency.  Teufel  was 
actually  the  strongest  signification  he  had ;  and  whenever  he 
was  excited  to  his  highest  emotional  pitch,  it  came  in  to  assist 
his  utterance  at  its  climax,  and  give  him  a  correspondingly 
powerful  expression.  "  This  thing  I  will  do,"  it  was  common 
for  him  to  say,  "  in  spite  of  all  who  may  oppose  me ;  be  it 
duke,  emperor,  priest,  bishop,  cardinal,  pope,  or  Devil." 
Man's  heart,  he  says,  is  a  "  Stock,  Stein,  Eisen,  Teufel,  hart 
Herz,"  ("  a  stock,  stone,  iron,  Devil,  hard  heart.")  And  it  was 
not  a  mere  vague  conception  he  had  of  this  being,  such  as 
theology  might  oblige.  On  the  contrary,  he  had  observed 
him  as  a  man  would  his  personal  enemy ;  and,  in  so  doing, 
had  formed  a  great  many  conclusions  respecting  his  powers 
and  his  character.  In  general,  Luther's  Devil  may  be  defined 
as  a  personification,  in  the  spirit  of  Scripture,  of  the  resisting 
medium  which  Luther  had  to  toil  his  way  through — spiritual 
fears,  passionate  uprisings,  fainting  resolutions  within  himself; 
error,  weakness,  envy  in  those  around  him ;  and  without,  a  whole 
world  howling  for  his  destruction.  It  is  in  effect  as  if  Luther 
had  said,  ''  Scripture  reveals  to  me  the  existence  of  a  great 

a 


82  THE  THREE   DEVILS: 

accursed  being,  whose  function  it  is  to  produce  evil.  It  is  for 
me  to  ascertain  the  character  of  this  Being  whom  I,  of  all  men, 
iiave  to  deal  with.  And  how  am  I  to  do  so  except  by  observ- 
ing him  working  ?  God  knows  I  have  not  far  to  go  in  search 
of  his  manifestations."  And  thus  Luther  went  on  filling  up 
the  Scriptural  proposition  with  his  daily  experience.  He  was 
constantly  gaining  a  clearer  conception  of  his  great  personal 
antagonist,  constantly  stumbling  upon  some  more  concealed 
trait  in  the  Spirit's  character.  The  Being  himself  was  invi- 
sible ;  but  he  was  walking  in  the  midst  of  his  manifestations. 
It  was  as  if  there  were  some  Being  whom  we  could  not  see, 
nor  directly  in  the  ordinary  way  have  any  intercourse  with ; 
but  who  every  morning,  before  it  was  light,  came  and  left  at 
our  door  some  exquisite  specimen  of  his  workmanship.  It 
would,  of  course,  be  difficult  under  such  disadvantages  to 
become  acquainted  with  the  character  of  our  invisible  corre- 
spondent and  morning  visitant ;  still  we  could  arrive  at  a  few 
conclusions  respecting  him,  and  the  more  of  his  workmanship 
we  saw,  the  more  insight  we  should  come  to  have.  Or  again, 
in  striving  to  realize  to  himself  the  Scriptural  proposition 
about  the  Devil,  Luther,  to  speak  in  the  language  of  the 
*'  Positive  Philosophy,"  was  but  striving  to  ascertain  the  laws 
according  to  which  evil  happens.  Only  the  Positive  Philo- 
sophy would  lay  a  veto  on  any  such  speculation,  and  pro- 
nounce it  fundamentally  vicious  in  this  respect — that  there 
are  not  two  courses  of  events,  separable  from  each  other,  in 
history,  the  one  good  and  the  other  evil,  but  that  evil  comes 
of  good  and  good  of  evil ;  so  that  if  we  are  to  have  a  science 
of  history  at  all,  the  least  we  can  have  is  a  science  of  the  laws 
according  to  which,  not  evil  follows  evil,  but  events  follow 
each  other.  Bat  History  to  Luther  was  not  a  physical  course 
of  events.     It  was  God  acting,  and  the  Devil  opposing. 

In  so  far,  Luther  did  not  differ  from  his  age.  Belief  in 
Satanic  agency  was  universal  at  that  period.  We  have 
no  idea  now  how  powerful  this  belief  was.  We  realize 
something  of  the  truth  when  we  read  the  depositions  in 
an  old  book  of  trials  for  witchcraft.  But  it  is  sufficient  to 
glance  over  any  writings  of  the  period  to  see  what  a  real 


Luther's,  milton's,  and  goethe's.  83 

meaning  was  then  attached  to  the  words  *'  Hell "  and  "  Devil." 
The  spirit  of  these  words  has  become  obsolete,  chased  away 
by  the  spirit  of  exposition.  That  was  what  M.  Comte  calls 
the  Theological  Period,  when  all  the  phenomena  of  mind  and 
matter  were  referred  to  the  agency  of  Spirits.  The  going  out 
of  the  belief  in  Satanic  agency  (for  even  those  who  retain  it 
in  profession  allow  it  no  force  in  practice),  M.  Comte  would 
attribute  to  the  progress  of  the  spirit  of  that  philosophy  of 
which  he  is  the  apostle.  We  do  not  think,  however,  that  the 
mere  progress  of  the  scientific  spirit — that  is,  the  mere  dispo- 
sition of  men  to  pursue  one  mode  of  thinking  with  respect  to 
all  classes  of  phenomena — could  have  been  sufficient  of  itself 
to  work  such  an  alteration  in  the  general  mind.  We  are  fond 
of  accounting  for  it,  in  part  at  least,  by  the  going  out,  in  the 
progress  of  civilization,  of  those  sensations  which  seem  na^ 
tm-ally  fitted  to  nourish  the  belief  in  supernatural  beings. 
The  tendency  of  civilization  has  been  to  diminish  our  oppor- 
tunities of  feeling  terror,  of  feeling  strongly  at  all.  The  horrific 
plays  a  much  less  important  part  in  human  experience  than 
it  once  did.  To  mention  but  a  single  instance,  we  are  ex- 
empted now,  by  mechanical  contrivances  for  locomotion,  (fee, 
from  the  necessity  of  being  much  in  darkness  or  wild  physical 
solitude.  This  is  especially  the  case  with  those  who  dwell  in 
cities,  and  therefore  exert  most  conspicuously  an  intellectual 
influence.  The  moaning  of  the  wind  at  night  in  winter  is 
about  their  highest  experience  of  the  kind ;  and  is  it  not  a 
corroboration  of  the  view  we  are  taking,  that  the  belief  in  the 
supernatural  is  always  strongest  at  the  moment  of  this  expe- 
rience ?  Scenes  and  situations  our  ancestors  were  in  every 
day,  are  strange  to  us.  We  have  not  now  to  travel  through 
forests  at  the  dead  of  night,  nor  to  pass  a  lonely  spot  on  a 
moor  where  a  murderer's  body  is  swinging  from  a  gibbet. 
Tam  o'  Shanter,  even  before  he  came  to  Allowa'  Kirk,  saw 
more  than  many  of  us  see  in  a  lifetime. 

*'  By  this  time  he  was  'cross  the  ford 
Whaur  in  the  snaw  the  chapman  smoor'd, 
And  past  the  birks  and  muckle  stane 
Whaur  dnmken  Charlie  brak's  neck  bane, 

a2 


^TB«A*r>^ 


84  THE   THliEE   DEVILS: 

And  through  the  whins  and  by  the  cairn 
Whaur  hunters  fand  the  murder'd  bairn, 
And  near  the  thorn  aboon  the  well 
Whaur  Mungo's  mither  hang'd  hersel." 

This  effect  of  civilization  in  reducing  all  our  sensations  to 
those  of  comfort,  we  conceive  to  be  really  an  alarming  circum- 
stance, in  the  point  of  view  under  consideration.  It  is  neces- 
sary for  many  a  reason  to  resist  the  universal  application  of 
the  ''  Positive  Philosophy,"  even  if  we  adopt  and  adore  it  as  an 
instrument  of  explication.  The  "  Positive  Philosophy  "  com- 
mands us  to  forbear  all  speculation  into  the  inexplicable.  For 
the  sake  of  many  things  this  order  must  be  disregarded.  Specu- 
lation into  the  essence  of  things  is  the  invariable  accompani- 
ment of  strong  feeling ;  and  the  moral  nature  of  man  would 
starve  upon  such  chopped  straw  as  the  mere  intellectual  rela- 
tions of  similitude  and  succession.  Nor  does  it  meet  the 
demands  of  the  case  to  say  that  the  "  Positive  Philosophy" 
would  be  always  far  in  arrears  of  the  known  phenomena, 
and  that  here  would  be  mystery  enough.  No  !  the  "  Positive 
Philosophy  "  would  require  to  strike  a  chasm  in  itself,  under 
the  title  of  the  Liberty  of  Hypothesis.  We  do  not  mean 
the  liberty  of  hypothesis  merely  as  a  means  of  anticipating 
theory,  but  for  emotional  and  imaginative  purposes.  It  is  in 
this  light  that  we  would  welcome  Animal  Magnetism,  or  any 
thing  else  whatever  that  would  but  knock  a  hole  through  the 
paper  wall  that  encloses  our  mode  of  being,  snub  the  self- 
conceit  of  our  senses,  and  give  us  other  and  more  difficult 
phenomena  to  explain. 

But  though  Luther  and  his  age  were  not  at  variance  in  the 
belief  in  Satanic  agency,  Luther,  of  course,  did  this  as  he  did 
every  thing  else,  gigantically.  Tlie  Devil,  as  Luther  conceived 
him,  was  not  the  Satan  of  Milton  ;  although,  had  Luther  set 
himself  to  realize  the  Miltonic  narrative,  his  conception  might 
not  have  been  dissimilar.  But  it  was  as  the  enemy  of 
mankind,  working  in  human  affairs,  that  Luther  conceived  the 
Devil.  We  should  expect  his  conception  therefore  to  tally 
with  Goethe's  in  some  respects,  but  only  as  a  conception 
of  Luther^s  would  tally  with  one  of  Goethe's.  Luther's  con- 
ception was  far  truer  to  the  grand  Scriptural  definition  than 


LUTHER'S,   MILTON'S,   AND   GOETHE's.  85 

either  Milton's  or  Goethe's.  Mephistopheles  being  a  charac- 
ter in  a  drama,  and  apparently  fully  occupied  in  his  capacity 
as  such,  we  cannot  bring  ourselves  to  recognise  in  him  that 
virtually  omnipotent  being  to  whom  all  evil  is  owing,  who  is 
leavening  the  human  mind  everywhere,  as  if  the  atmosphere 
round  the  globe  were  charged  with  the  venom  of  his  spirit. 
In  the  case  of  Milton's  Satan  we  have  no  such  difficulty, 
because  in  his  case  a  whole  planet  is  at  stake,  and  there  are 
only  two  individuals  on  it.  But  Luther's  conception  met  the 
whole  exigency  of  Scripture.  His  conception  was  distinctly 
that  of  a  being  to  whose  operation  all  the  evil  of  all  times  and 
all  places  ia  owing ;  a  veritable  jrvevfia  diffused  through  the 
earth's  atmosphere.  Hence  his  mind  had  to  entertain  the  notion 
of  a  plurality  of  devils ;  for  he  could  only  conceive  the  Arch- 
spirit  acting  corporeally  through  imps  or  emanations.  Goethe's 
Mephistopheles  might  pass  for  one  of  these. 

It  would  be  possible  farther  to  illustrate  Luther's  concep- 
tion of  the  Evil  Principle  by  presenting  a  great  many  of  his 
specific  sayings  respecting  him.  It  would  be  found  from  these 
that  his  conception  was  that  of  a  being  to  whom  evil  of  all 
kinds  was  dear.  The  Devil  with  him  was  a  meteorological 
agent.  Devils,  he  said,  are  in  woods,  and  waters,  and  dark 
poolly  places,  ready  to  hurt  passers-by ;  there  are  devils  also 
in  the  thick  black  clouds,  who  cause  hail  and  thunders  and 
lightnings,  and  poison  the  air  and  the  fields  and  the  pas- 
tures. "  When  such  things  happen,  philosophers  say  they 
are  natural,  and  ascribe  them  to  the  planets,  and  I  know 
not  what  all."  The  Devil  he  believed  also  to  be  the 
patron  of  witchcraft.  The  Devil,  he  said,  had  the  power 
of  deceiving  the  senses,  so  that  one  should  swear  he  heard 
or  saw  something,  while  really  the  whole  was  an  illusion. 
The  Devil  also  was  at  the  bottom  of  dreaming  and  som- 
nambulism. He  was  likewise  the  author  of  diseases.  "  I 
hold,"  said  Luther,  *'  that  the  Devil  sendeth  all  heavy  diseases 
and  sicknesses  upon  people."  Diseases  are,  as  it  were,  the 
Devil  striking  people;  only,  in  striking,  he  must  use  some 
natural  instrument,  as  a  murderer  uses  a  sword.  When  our 
sins  get  the  upper  hand,  and  all  is  going  wrong,  then  the 


86  THE   THREE    DEVILS: 

Devil  must  be  God's  hangman,  to  clear  away  obstructions  and 
to  blast  the  earth  with  famines  and  pestilences.  Whatsoever 
procures  death,  that  is  the  Devil's  trade.  All  sadness  and 
melancholy  come  of  the  Devil.  So  does  insanity;  but  the 
Devil  has  no  farther  power  over  the  soul  of  a  maniac.  The 
Devil  works  in  the  affairs  of  nations.  He  looks  always  upward, 
taking  an  interest  in  what  is  high  and  pompous ;  he  does  not 
look  downward,  taking  little  interest  in  what  is  insignificant 
and  lowly.  He  likes  to  work  on  the  great  scale ;  to  establish 
an  influence,  as  it  were,  over  the  central  minds  which  manage 
affairs.  The  Devil  is  also  a  spiritual  tempter.  He  is  the 
opponent  of  the  Divine  grace  in  the  hearts  of  individuals. 
This  was  the  aspect  of  the  doctrine  of  Satanic  agency  which 
would  be  most  used  in  preaching ;  and  accordingly  Luther's 
propositions  on  the  point  are  very  specific.  He  had,  as  it 
were,  ascertained  the  laws  of  Satanic  operation  upon  the 
human  spirit.  The  Devil,  he  said,  knows  Scripture  well,  and 
uses  it  in  argument.  He  shoots  fearful  thoughts,  which  are 
his  fiery  darts,  into  the  hearts  of  the  godly.  The  Devil  is  ac- 
quainted even  with  those  mysterious  enjoyments,  those  spi- 
ritual excitements,  which  the  Christian  would  suppose  a  being 
like  him  must  be  ignorant  of.  "What  gross  inexperienced 
fellows,"  he  says,  "  are  these  Papist  commentators !  They  are 
for  interpreting  Paul's  'thorn  in  the  flesh'  to  be  merely 
fleshly  lust ;  because  they  know  no  other  kind  of  tribulation 
than  that."  But  though  the  Devil  has  great  power  over  the 
human  mind,  he  is  limited  in  some  respects.  He  has  no  means, 
for  instance,  of  knowing  the  thoughts  of  the  faithful  until  they 
give  them  utterance.  Again,  if  the  Devil  be  once  foiled  in 
argument,  he  cannot  tempt  that  soul  again  on  the  same  tack. 
The  Papacy  being  with  Luther  the  grand  existing  form  of 
evil,  he  of  course  recognised  the  Devil  in  it.  If  the  Papacy 
were  once  overthrown,  Satan  would  lose  his  stronghold. 
Never  on  earth  again  would  he  be  able  to  pile  up  such  another 
edifice.  No  wonder,  then,  that  at  that  moment  all  the  energies 
of  the  enraged  and  despairing  Spirit  were  employed  to  prop 
up  the  reeling  and  tottering  fabric.  Necessarily,  therefore, 
Luther  and  Satan  were  personal  antagonists.    Satan  saw  that 


LUTHER'S,   MILTON'S,  AND  GOETHE'S.  87 

the  grand  struggle  was  with  Luther.  If  he  could  but  crush 
him  bj  physical  violence,  or  make  him  forget  God,  then  the 
world  would  be  his  own  again.  So,  often  did  he  wrestle  with 
Luther's  spirit ;  often  in  nightly  heart-agonies  did  he  try  to 
shake  his  faith  in  Christ.  But  he  was  never  victorious.  "  All 
tlie  Duke  Georges  in  the  universe,'^  said  Luther,  "are  not 
equal  to  a  single  devil ;  and  I  do  not  fear  the  Devil."  "  I 
should  wish,"  he  said,  "  to  die  rather  by  the  Devil's  hands 
tlian  by  the  hands  of  Pope  or  Emperor ;  for  then  I  should  die 
at  all  events  by  the  hands  of  a  great  and  mighty  prince  of  the 
world ;  but  if  I  die  through  him,  he  shall  eat  such  a  bit  of  me 
as  will  be  his  suffocation ;  he  shall  spew  me  out  again ;  and  at 
the  last  day,  I,  in  requital,  shall  devour  him.'^  When  all 
other  means  were  unavailing,  Luther  found  that  the  Devil 
could  not  stand  against  humour.  In  his  hours  of  spiritual 
agony,  he  tells  us,  when  the  Devil  was  heaping  up  his  sins 
before  him,  so  as  to  make  him  doubt  if  he  should  be  saved, 
and  when  he  could  not  drive  him  away  by  uttering  sentences 
of  Holy  Writ,  or  by  prayer,  he  used  to  address  him  thus : 
"  Devil,  if,  as  you  say,  Christ's  blood,  which  was  shed  for  my 
sins,  be  not  sufficient  to  cnsui-e  my  salvation,  can't  you  pray 
for  me  yourself,  Devil?"  At  tliis,  the  Devil  invariably  fled, 
"  quia  est  superbus  spiritus,  et  non  potest  ferre  contemptum 
sui." 

What  with  Luther  was  "  wrestling  with  the  Devil,"  we  at 
this  day  would  call  "  low  spirits."  Life  must  be  a  much  more 
insipid  thing  now  than  it  was  then.  O  what  a  soul  that  man 
must  have  had  ;  under  what  a  weight  of  feeling,  that  would 
liave  crushed  a  million  of  us,  he  must  have  trod  the  earth ! 


DRYDEN,  AND  THE  LITERATUEE  OF  THE 
RESTORATION.  * 


It  is  a  common  remark  that  literature  flourislies  hest  in  times 
of  social  order  and  leism-e,  and  suffers  immediate  depression 
whenever  the  puhlic  mind  is  agitated  by  violent  civil  contro- 
versies. The  remark  is  more  true  than  such  popular  induc- 
tions usually  are.  It  is  confirmed,  on  the  small  scale,  by 
what  every  one  finds  in  his  own  experience.  When  a  family 
is  agitated  by  any  matter  affecting  its  interests,  there  is  an 
immediate  cessation  from  all  the  lighter  luxuries  of  books  and 
music  wherewith  it  used  to  beguile  its  leisure.  All  the  mem- 
bers of  the  family  are  intent  for  the  time  being  on  the  matter 
in  hand  ;  if  books  are  consulted  it  is  for  some  purpose  of  prac- 
tical reference  ;  and  if  pens  are  active,  it  is  in  writing  letters 
of  business.  Not  till  the  matter  is  fairly  concluded  are  the 
recreations  of  music  and  literature  resumed  ;  though  then,  pos- 
sibly, with  a  keener  zest  and  a  mind  more  full  and  fresh  than 
before.  Precisely  so  it  is  on  the  larger  scale.  If  everything 
that  is  spoken  or  written  be  called  literature,  there  is  probably 
always  about  the  same  amount  of  literature  going  on  in  a 
community ;  or,  if  there  is  any  increase  or  decrease,  it  is  but 
in  proportion  to  the  increase  of  the  population.  But,  if  by 
literature  we  mean  a  certain  peculiar  kind  and  quality  of 
spoken  or  written  matter,  recognisable  by  its  likeness  to  certain 
known  precedents,  then,  undoubtedly  literature  flourishes  in 
times  of  quiet  and  security,  and  wanes  in  times  of  convulsion 
and  disorder.  When  the  storm  of  some  great  civil  contest  is 
blowing,  it  is  impossible  for  even  the  serenest  man  to  shut 

*  British  Quakterlt  Keview,  July  1854.  The  Annotated  Edition  of  the 
English  Poets :  Edited  by  Robert  Bell,  "  Poetical  Works  of  John  Diyden." 
3  vols.  London,     1854, 


THE   LITERATURE   OF  THE   RESTORATION.  89 

himself  quite  in  from  the  noise,  and  turn  over  the  leaves  of 
his  Horace,  or  practise  his  violin,  as  undistractedly  as  hefore. 
Great  is  the  power  of  pococurantism ;  and  it  is  a  noble  sight 
to  see,  in  the  midst  of  some  Whig  and  Tory  excitement  which 
is  throwing  the  general  community  into  sixes  and  sevens,  and 
sending  mobs  along  the  streets,  the  calm  devotee  of  hard 
science,  or  the  impassioned  lover  of  the  ideal,  going  on  his 
way,  aloof  from  it  all,  and  smiling  at  it  all.  But  there  are 
times  when  even  these  obdurate  gentlemen  will  be  touched,  in 
spite  of  themselves,  to  the  tune  of  what  is  going  on ;  when  the 
shouts  of  the  mob  will  penetrate  to  the  closets  of  the  most 
studious ;  and  when,  as  Archimedes  of  old  had  to  leave  his 
darling  diagrams  and  trudge  along  the  Syracusan  streets  to 
superintend  the  construction  of  rough  cranes  and  catapults,  so 
philosophers  and  poets  alike  will  have  4;o  quit  their  favomite 
occupations,  and  be  whirled  along  in  the  common  agitation. 
These  are  times  when  whatever  literature  there  is  assumes  a 
character  of  immediate  and  practical  interest.  Just  as,  in  the 
supposed  case,  the  literary  activity  of  the  family  is  consumed 
in  mere  letters  of  business,  so,  in  this,  the  literary  activity 
of  the  community  exhausts  itself  in  newspaper-articles,  public 
speeches,  and  pamphlets,  more  or  less  elaborate,  on  the  present 
crisis.  There  may  be  a  vast  amount  of  mind  at  work,  and  as 
much,  on  the  whole,  may  be  written  as  before  ;  but  the  very 
excess  of  what  may  be  called  the  pamphlet-literature,  which 
is  perishable  in  its  nature,  will  leave  a  deficiency  in  the  various 
departments  of  literature  more  strictly  so  called — philosophical 
or  expository  literature,  historical  literature,  and  the  literature 
of  pure  imagination.  Not  till  the  turmoil  is  over,  not  till  the 
battle  has  been  fairly  fought  out,  and  the  mental  activity  in- 
volved in  it  has  been  let  loose  for  more  scattered  work,  will 
the  calmer  muses  resume  their  sway,  and  the  press  send  forth 
treatises  and  histories  and  poems  and  romances  as  well  as 
pamphlets.  Then,  however,  men  may  return  to  literature 
with  a  new  zest,  and  the  very  storm  which  has  interrupted 
the  course  of  pure  literature  for  a  time  may  infuse  into  such 
literature  wlien  it  begins  again,  a  fresher  and  stronger  spirit. 
If  the  battle  has  ended  in  a  victory,  there  will  be  a  tone  of 


90  DRYDEN,   AND  THE 

joy,  of  exultation,  and  of  scorn,  in  what  men  think  and  write 
after  it ;  if  it  has  ended  in  a  defeat,  all  that  is  thought  and 
written  will  be  tinged  by  a  deeper  and  finer  sorrow. 

The  history  of  English  literature  affords  some  curious  illus- 
trations of  this  law.  It  has  always  puzzled  historians,  for 
example,  to  account  for  such  a  great  unoccupied  gap  in  our 
literary  progress  as  occurs  between  the  death  of  Chaucer  and 
the  middle  of  the  reign  of  Elizabeth.  From  the  year  1250, 
when  the  English  language  first  makes  its  appearance  in 
anything  like  its  present  form,  to  the  year  1400,  when  Chaucer 
died,  forms,  as  all  know,  the  infant  age  of  our  literature.  It  was 
an  age  of  gi*eat  literary  activity ;  and  how  much  was  achieved 
in  it  remains  apparent  in  the  fact  that  it  culminated  in  a  man 
like  Chaucer — a  man  whom,  without  any  drawback  for  the 
early  epoch  at  which  he  lived,  we  still  regard  as  one  of  our 
literary  princes.  Nor  was  Chaucer  the  solitary  name  of  his 
age.  He  had  some  notable  contemporaries,  both  in  verse  and 
in  prose.  When  we  pass  from  Chaucer's  age,  however,  we  have 
to  overleap  nearly  a  hundred  and  eighty  years  before  we  alight 
upon  a  period  presenting  anything  like  an  adequate  show  of 
literary  continuation.  A  few  smaller  names,  like  those  of  Lyd- 
gate,  Surrey,  and  Skelton,  are  all  that  can  be  cited  as  poetical 
representatives  of  this  sterile  interval  in  the  literary  history 
of  England ;  whatever  of  Chaucer's  genius  still  lingered  in  the 
island  seeming  to  have  travelled  northward,  and  taken  refuge 
in  a  series  of  Scottish  poets,  far  excelling  any  of  their  English 
contemporaries.  How  is  this  to  be  accounted  for  ?  Is  it  that 
really,  during  this  period,  there  was  less  of  available  mind  than 
before  in  England ;  that  the  quality  of  the  English  nerve,  so 
to  speak,  had  degenerated?  By  no  means  necessarily  so. 
Englishmen,  during  this  period,  were  engaged  in  enterprises 
requiring  no  small  amount  of  intellectual  and  moral  vigour ; 
and  there  remain  to  us,  from  the  same  period,  specimens  of 
grave  and  serious  prose,  which,  if  we  do  not  place  them  among 
the  gems  of  our  literature,  we  at  least  regard  as  evidence  that 
our  ancestors  of  those  days  were  men  of  heart  and  wit  and 
solid  sense.  In  short,  we  are  driven  to  suppose  that  there  was 
something  in  the  social  circumstances- of  England  during  the 


LITERATURE   OF  THE  RESTORATION.  91 

long  period  in  question,  wliicTi  prevented  such  talent  as  there 
was  from  assuming  the  particular  form  of  literature.  Fully 
to  make  out  what  this  "  something  '^  was,  may  baffle  us ;  but 
when  we  remember  that  this  was  the  period  of  the  civil  wars 
of  the  Koses,  and  also  of  the  great  Anglican  Eeformation,  we 
have  reason  enough  to  conclude  that  the  dearth  of  pure  litera- 
ture may  have  been  owing,  in  part,  to  the  engrossing  nature 
of  those  practical  questions  which  then  disturbed  English 
society.  When  Chaucer  wrote,  England,  under  the  splendid 
rule  of  the  third  Edward,  was  potent  and  triumphant  abroad, 
but  large  and  leisurely  at  home ;  but  scarcely  had  that  monarch 
vacated  the  throne  when  a  series  of  civil  jars  began,  which 
tore  the  nation  into  factions,  and  was  speedily  followed  by 
a  religious  movement  as  powerful  in  its  eiFects.  Accordingly, 
though  printing  was  introduced  during  this  period,  and  thus 
Englishmen  had  greater  temptations  to  write,  what  they  did 
write  was  almost  exclusively  plain  grave  prose,  intended  for 
practical  or  polemical  occasions,  and  making  no  figure  in  a 
historical  retrospect.  How  different  when,  passing  the  con- 
troversial reigns  of  Henry  VIII.,  Edward  VI.,  and  Mary,  we 
come  upon  the  golden  days  of  Queen  Bess !  Controversy 
enough  remained  to  give  occasion  to  plenty  of  polemical 
prose  ;  but  about  the  middle  of  her  reign,  when  England, 
once  more  great  and  powerful  abroad  as  in  the  time  of  the 
Edwards,  settled  down  within  herself  into  a  new  lease  of 
social  order  and  leisure  under  an  ascertained  government, 
there  began  an  outburst  of  literary  genius  such  as  no  age  or 
country  had  ever  before  witnessed.  The  literary  fecundity  of 
that  period  of  English  history  which  embraces  the  latter  half 
of  the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  and  the  whole  of  the  reign  of 
James  I.  (1580-1625),  is  a  perpetual  astonishment  to  us  all. 
In  the  entire  preceding  three  centuries  and  a  half,  reckoning 
from  the  first  use  of  the  English  tongue,  we  can  with  dif- 
ficulty name  six  men  that  can,  by  any  charity  of  judgment, 
be  regarded  as  stars  in  our  literature,  and  of  these  only  one 
that  is  a  star  of  the  first  magnitude :  whereas,  in  this  brief 
period  of  forty-five  or  fifty  years,  we  can  reckon  up  a  host  of 
poets  and  prose- writers  all  noticeable  on  high  literary  grounds, 


92  DRYDEN,   AND  THE 

and  of  whom  at  least  thirty  were  men  of  extraordinary 
dimensions.  Indeed,  in  the  contemplation  of  the  intellectual 
abundance  and  variety  of  this  age — the  age  of  Spenser,  and 
Shakespeare,  and  Bacon,  and  Kaleigh,  and  Hooker,  and  Ben 
Jonson,  and  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  and  Donne,  and  Herbert, 
and  Massinger,  and  their  illustrious  contemporaries — we  feel 
ourselves  driven  from  the  theory  that  so  rich  a  literary  crop 
could  have  resulted  from  that  mere  access  of  social  leisure 
after  a  long  series  of  national  broils  to  which  we  do  in  part 
attribute  it,  and  are  obliged  to  suppose  that  there  must  have 
been,  along  with  this,  an  actually  finer  substance  and  con- 
dition, for  the  time  being,  of  the  national  nerve.  The  very 
brain  of  England  must  have  become  more  "  quick,  nimble, 
and  forgetive,"  before  the  time  of  leisure  came. 

We  have  spoken  of  this  great  age  of  English  literature  as 
terminating  with  the  reign  of  James  I.,  in  1625.  In  point  of 
fact,  however,  it  extended  some  way  into  the  reign  of  his  son, 
Charles  I.  Spenser  had  died  in  1599,  before  James  had 
ascended  the  English  throne ;  Shakespeare  and  Beaumont 
had  died  in  1616,  while  James  still  reigned  ;  Fletcher  died  in 
1625 ;  Bacon  died  in  1626,  when  the  crown  had  been  but  a 
year  on  Charles's  head.  But  while  these  great  men  and  many 
of  their  contemporaries  had  vanished  from  the  scene  before 
England  had  any  experience  of  the  first  Charles,  some  of 
their  peers  survived  to  tell  what  kind  of  men  they  had  been. 
Ben  Jonson  lived  till  1637,  and  was  poet-laureate  to 
Charles  I. ;  Donne  and  Drayton  lived  till  1631 ;  Herbert, 
till  1632  ;  Chapman,  till  1634;  Dekker,  till  1638  ;  Ford,  till 
1639;  and  Hey  wood  and  Massinger,  till  1640. 

There  is  one  point  in  the  reign  of  Charles,  however,  where 
a  clear  line  may  be  drawn  separating  the  last  of  the  Eliza- 
bethan giants  from  their  literary  successors.  This  is  the 
point  at  which  the  Civil  War  commences.  The  whole  of 
the  earlier  part  of  Charles's  reign  was  a  preparation  for  this 
war;  but  it  cannot  be  said  to  have  fairly  begun  till  the 
meeting  of  the  Long  Parliament  in  1640,  when  Charles  had 
been  fifteen  years  on  the  throne.  If  we  select  this  year  as  the 
commencement  of  the  great  Puritan  and  Republican  Revolu- 


LITERATURE   OF  THE   RESTORATION.  93 

tlon  in  England,  and  the  year  1660,  when  Charles  II.  was 
restored,  as  the  close  of  the  same  Kevolution,  we  shall  have 
a  period  of  twenty  years  to  which,  if  there  is  any  truth  in 
the  notion  that  the  muses  shun  strife,  this  notion  should  be 
found  peculiarly  applicable.  Is  it  so  ?  We  think  it  is.  In 
the  first  place,  as  we  have  just  said,  the  last  of  the  Elizabethan 
giants  died  off  before  this  period  began,  as  if  killed  by  the 
mere  approach  to  an  atmosphere  so  lurid  and  tempestuous. 
In  the  second  place,  in  the  case  of  such  writers  as  were  old 
enough  to  have  learnt  in  the  school  of  these  giants  and  yet 
young  enough  to  survive  them  and  enter  on  the  period  of 
struggle — as,  for  example,  Herrick  (1591-1660),  Shirley 
(1596-1666),  Waller  (1605-1687),  Davenant  (1605-1668), 
Suckling  (1608-1643),  Milton  (1608-1674),  Butler  (1612- 
1680),  Cleveland  (1613-1658),  Denham  (1615-1668),  and 
Cowley  (1618-1667), — it  will  be  found,  on  examination, 
either  that  the  time  of  their  literary  activity  did  not  coincide 
with  the  period  of  struggle,  but  came  before  it,  or  after  it,  or 
lay  on  both  sides  of  it;  or  that  what  they  did  write  of 
a  purely  literary  character  during  this  period  was  written  in 
exile;  or,  lastly,  that  what  they  did  write  at  home  of  a 
genuine  literary  character  during  this  period  is  inconsiderable 
in  quantity,  and  dashed  with  a  vein  of  polemical  allusion, 
rendering  it  hardly  an  exception  to  the  rule.  The  literary 
career  of  Milton  illustrates  very  strikingly  this  fact  of  the  all 
but  entire  cessation  of  pure  literature  in  England  between 
1640  and  1660.  Milton's  life  consists  of  three  distinctly 
marked  periods — the  first  ending  with  1640,  during  which  he 
composed  his  exquisite  minor  poems ;  the  second  extending 
precisely  from  1640  to  1660,  during  which  he  wrote  no  poetry 
at  all,  except  a  few  sonnets,  but  produced  his  various  polemical 
prose  treatises  or  pamphlets,  and  served  the  state  as  a  public 
functionary ;  and  the  third,  which  may  be  called  the  period  of 
his  later  muse,  extending  from  1660  to  his  death  in  1674,  and 
famous  for  the  composition  of  his  greater  poems.  Thus 
Milton's  prose-period,  if  we  may  so  term  it,  coincided  exactly 
with  the  period  of  civil  strife  and  Cromwellian  rule.  And  if 
this  was  the  case  with  Milton ;  if  he,  who  was  essentially 


94  DRYDEN,   AND  THE 

the  poet  of  Puritanism,  with  his  whole  heart  and  soul  in  the 
struggle  which  Cromwell  led,  was  obliged,  during  the  process 
of  that  struggle,  to  lay  aside  his  singing  robes,  postpone  his 
plans  of  a  great  immortal  poem,  and  in  the  meanwhile  drudge 
laboriously  as  a  prose  pamphleteer ;  how  much  more'must  those 
have  been  reduced  to  silence  or  brought  down  into  practical 
prose,  who  found  no  such  inspiration  in  the  movement  as  it 
gave  to  the  soul  of  Milton,  but  regarded  it  all  as  desola- 
tion and  disaster  I  Indeed,  one  large  department  of  the 
national  literature  at  this  period  was  proscribed  by  civil 
enactment.  Stage-plays  were  prohibited  in  1642,  and  it 
was  not  till  after  the  Eestoration  that  the  theatres  were  re- 
opened. Such  a  prohibition,  though  it  left  the  sublime  muse 
of  Milton  at  liberty,  had  it  cared  to  sing,  was  a  virtual  ex- 
tinction for  the  time  of  all  the  customary  literature.  In  fine, 
if  all  the  literary  produce  of  England  in  the  interval  between 
1640  and  1660  is  examined,  it  will  be  found  to  consist  in  the 
main  of  a  huge  mass  of  controversial  prose,  by  far  the  greater 
proportion  of  which,  though  effective  at  the  time,  is  little 
better  now  than  antiquarian  rubbish,  astonishing  from  its 
bulk,  though  some  small  percentage,  including  all  that  came 
from  the  terrible  pen  of  Milton,  is  saved,  by  reason  of  its 
strength  and  grandeur.  The  intellect  of  England  was  as 
active  and  as  abundant  as  ever,  but  it  was  all  required  for  the 
current  service  of  the  time.  The  only  exception  of  any  con- 
sequence was  in  the  case  of  that  singular  personage.  Sir 
Thomas  Browne,  the  author  of  the  Religio  Medici,  While 
all  England  was  in  throes  and  confusion,  this  mystical,  and, 
with  all  due  respect,  somewhat  priggish  and  overrated  man, 
was  pottering  along  his  garden  at  Norwich,  pursuing  his 
meditations  about  sepulchral  urns  and  his  inquiries  respecting 
the  Quincuncial  Lozenge.  His  views  of  things  would  have 
been  considerably  improved  by  a  kick,  during  one  of  his 
meditative  walks,  from  the  boot  of  an  Ironside. 

Had  Cromwell  lived  longer,  or  had  he  established  a  dynasty 
capable  of  maintaining  itself,  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  there 
would  have  come  a  time  of  leisure  during  which,  even  under 
a  Puritan  rule,  there  would  have  been  a  new  outburst  of 


LITERATURE   OF  THE   RESTORATION.  95 

English  Literature.  There  were  symptoms,  towards  the  close 
of  the  Protectorate,  that  Cromwell,  having  now  "  reasonable 
good  leisure,"  was  willing  and  even  anxious  that  the  nation 
should  resume  its  old  literary  industry  and  all  its  innocent 
liberties  and  pleasures.  He  allowed  Cowley,  Waller,  Denham, 
Davenant,  and  other  Eoyalists,  to  come  over  from  France,  and 
was  glad  to  see  them  employed  in  writing  verses.  Waller 
became  one  of  his  courtiers,  and  composed  panegyrics  on  him. 
He  released  Cleveland  from  prison  in  a  very  handsome  man- 
ner, considering  what  hard  things  the  witty  roysterer  had 
written  about  ''  O.P.^'  and  his  "  copper  nose."  He  appears 
even  to  have  winked  at  Davenant,  when,  in  violation  of  the 
act  against  stage-plays,  that  gentlemanly  poet  began  to  give 
private  theatrical  entertainments  under  the  name  of  operas. 
Davenant's  heretical  friend,  Hobbes,  too,  already  obnoxious  by 
his  opinions  even  to  his  own  political  party,  availed  himself 
of  the  liberty  of  the  press  to  issue,  some  fresh  metaphysical 
essays,  which  the  Protector  may  have  read.  In  fact,  had 
Cromwell  survived  a  few  years,  there  would,  in  all  probability, 
have  arisen,  under  his  auspices,  a  new  literature,  of  which  his 
admirer  and  secretary,  Milton,  would  have  been  the  laureate. 
What  might  have  been  the  characteristics  of  this  literature  of 
the  Commonwealth,  had  it  developed  itself  to  its  full  form  and 
proportions,  we  can  but  guess.  That,  in  some  respects  it 
would  not  have  been  so  broad  and  various  as  the  literature 
which  took  its  rise  from  the  Restoration,  is  very  likely  ;  for, 
as  long  as  the  Puritan  element  had  remained  dominant  in 
English  society,  it  is  impossible  that,  with  any  amount  of 
liberty  of  the  press,  there  could  have  been  such  an  outbreak  of 
the  merely  comic  spirit  as  did  occur  when  that  element  suc- 
cumbed to  its  antagonist,  and  genius  had  official  licence  to  be 
as  profligate  as  it  chose.  But  if  less  gay  and  riotous,  it 
might  have  been  more  earnest,  powerful,  and  impressive.  For 
its  masterpiece  it  would  still  have  had  Paradise  Lost, — 
a  work  which,  as  it  is,  we  must  regard  as  its  peculiar  offspring, 
though  posthumously  born  ;  nor  can  we  doubt  that,  if  borne 
up  by  the  example  and  the  recognised  supremacy  of  such  a 
laureate  as  Milton,  the  younger  literary  men  of  the  time  would 


96  DRTDEN,   AND  THE 

have  found  themselves  capable  of  other  things  than  epigrams 
and  farces. 

It  was  fated,  however,  that  the  national  leisure  requisite  for 
a  new  development  of  English  literary  genius,  should  com- 
mence only  with  the  restoration  of  the  Stuarts  in  1660 ;  and 
then  it  was  a  leisure  secured  under  very  different  circum- 
stances from  those  which  would  have  attended  a  perpetuation 
of  Cromwell's  rule.  With  Charles  II.  there  came  back  into 
the  island,  after  many  years  of  banishment,  all  the  excesses  of 
the  cavalier  spirit,  more  reckless  than  before,  and  considerably 
changed  by  long  residence  in  continental  cities,  and  especially 
in  the  French  capital.  Cavalier  noblemen  and  gentlemen 
came  back,  bringing  with  them  French  tastes,  French 
fashions,  and  foreign  ladies  of  pleasure.  As  Charles  II.  was 
a  different  man  from  his  father,  so  the  courtiers  that  gathered 
round  him  at  Whitehall  were  very  different  from  those  who 
had  fought  with  Charles  I.  against  the  Parliamentarians. 
Their  political  principles  and  prejudices  were  nominally  the 
same,  but  they  were  for  the  most  part  men  of  a  younger  gene- 
ration, less  stiff  and  English  in  their  demeanour,  and  more 
openly  dissolute  in  their  morals.  Such  was  the  court  the 
restoration  of  which  England  virtually  confessed  to  be  neces- 
sary to  prevent  a  new  era  of  anarchy.  It  was  inaugurated 
amid  the  shouts  of  the  multitude  ;  and  Puritanism,  already 
much  weakened  by  defections  before  the  event,  hastened  to 
disappear  from  the  public  stage,  diffusing  itself  once  more  as 
a  mere  element  of  secret  efficacy  through  the  veins  of  the 
community,  and  purchasing  even  this  favour  by  the  sacrifice 
of  its  most  notorious  leaders. 

Miserable  in  some  respects  as  was  this  change  for  England, 
it  offered,  by  reason  of  the  very  unanimity  with  which  it  was 
effected,  all  the  conditions  necessary  for  the  forthcoming  of  a 
new  literature.  But  where  were  the  materials  for  the  com- 
mencement of  this  new  literature  ? 

First,  as  regards  persons  fit  to  initiate  it,  there  were  all 
those  who  had  been  left  over  from  the  Protectorate,  together 
with  such  wits  as  the  Kestoration  itself  had  brought  back,  or 
called  into  being.     There  was  the  old  dramatist,  Shirley,  now 


I 


LITERATUEE   OF  THE   RESTORATION.  97 

in  his  sixty-fifth  year,  very  glad,  no  doubt,  to  come  back  to 
town,  after  his  hard  fare  as  a  country-schoolmaster  during  the 
eclipse  of  the  stage,  and  to  resume  his  former  occupation  as  a 
writer  of  plays  in  the  style  that  had  been  in  fashion  thirty 
years  before.  There  was  Hobbes,  older  still  than  Shirley,  a 
tough  old  soul  of  seventy-three,  but  with  twenty  more  years 
of  life  in  him,  and,  though  not  exactly  a  literary  man,  yet 
sturdy  enough  to  be  whatever  he  liked  within  certain  limits. 
There  was  mild  Izaak  Walton,  of  Chancery-lane,  only  five 
years  younger  than  Hobbes,  but  destined  to  live  as  long,  and 
capable  of  writing  very  nicely  if  he  could  have  been  kept 
from  sauntering  into  the  fields  to  fish.  There  was  the  gen- 
tlemanly Waller,  now  fifty-six  years  of  age,  quite  ready  to  be 
a  poet  about  the  court  of  Charles,  and  to  write  panegyrics  on 
the  new  side  to  atone  for  that  on  Cromwell.  There  was  the 
no  less  gentlemanly  Davenant,  also  fifty-six  years  of  age, 
steady  to  his  royalist  principles,  as  became  a  man  who  had 
received  the  honour  of  knighthood  from  the  royal  martyr, 
and  enjoying  a  wide  reputation  partly  from  his  poetical 
talents,  and  partly  from  his  want  of  nose.  There  was  Milton, 
in  his  fifty-third  year,  blind,  desolate,  and  stern,  hiding  in 
obscure  lodgings  till  his  defences  of  regicide  should  be  suf- 
ficiently forgotten  to  save  him  from  molestation,  and  building 
up  in  imagination  the  scheme  of  his  promised  epic.  There 
was  Butler,  four  years  younger,  brimful  of  hatred  to  the 
Puritans,  and  already  engaged  in  his  poem  of  Hudibras, 
which  was  to  lash  them  so  much  to  the  popular  taste.  There 
was  Denham,  known  as  a  versifier  little  inferior  to  Waller, 
and  with  such  superior  claims  on  the  score  of  loyalty  as  to  be 
considered  worthy  of  knighthood  and  the  first  vacant  post. 
There  was  Cowley,  still  only  in  his  forty-third  year,  and  with 
a  ready-made  reputation,  both  as  a  poet  and  a  prose-writer, 
such  as  none  of  his  contemporaries  possessed,  and  such  indeed 
as  no  English  writer  had  acquired  since  the  days  of  Ben 
Jonson  and  Donne.  Younger  still,  and  with  his  fame  as  a 
satirist  not  yet  made,  there  was  Milton's  friend,  honest 
Andrew  Marvel,  whom  the  people  of  Hull  had  chosen  as  their 
representative  in  Parliament.     Had  the  search  been  extended 

H 


98  DRYDEN,   AND  THE 

to  theologians,  and  such  of  them  selected  as  were  capable  of 
influencing  the  literature  by  the  form  of  their  writings,  as 
distinct  from  their  matter,  Jeremy  Taylor  was  still  alive, 
though  his  work  was  nearly  over ;  Richard  Baxter,  with  a 
longer  life  before  him,  was  in  the  prime  of  his  strength ;  and 
there  was  in  Bedford,  an  eccentric  Baptist  preacher,  once  a 
tinker,  who  was  to  be  the  author,  though  no  one  supposed  it, 
of  the  greatest  prose  allegory  in  the  language.  Close  about 
the  person  of  the  king,  too,  there  were  able  men  and  wits, 
capable  of  writing  themselves,  or  of  criticising  what  was 
written  by  others — from  the  famous  counsellor  Clarendon, 
down  to  such  younger  and  lighter  men  as  Dillon,  Earl  of 
Roscommon,  Sackville,  Earl  of  Dorset,  and  Sir  Charles  Sed- 
ley.  Lastly,  not  to  extend  the  list  farther,  there  was  then  in 
London,  aged  twenty-nine,  and  going  about  in  a  stout  plain 
dress  of  grey  drugget,  a  Northamptonshire  squire^ s  son, 
named  John  Dryden,  who,  after  having  been  educated  at 
Cambridge,  had  come  up  to  town  in  the  last  year  of  the  Pro- 
tectorate to  push  his  fortune  under  a  Puritan  relative  then  in 
office,  and  who  had  already  once  or  twice  tried  his  hand  at 
poetry.  Like  "Waller,  he  had  written  and  published  a  series 
of  panegyrical  stanzas  on  Cromwell  after  his  death ;  and  like 
Waller,  also,  he  had  attempted  to  atone  for  this  miscalculation 
by  writing  another  poem,  called  Astraa  Bedux,  to  celebrate 
the  return  of  Charles.  As  a  taste  of  what  this  poet,  in  par- 
ticular, could  do,  take  the  last  of  his  stanzas  on  Cromwell : — 

"  His  ashes  in  a  peaceful  urn  shall  rest ; 

His  name  a  great  example  stands  to  show, 
How  strangely  high  endeavours  may  be  blessed, 
Where  piety  and  valour  jointly  go." 

or,  in  another  metre  and  another  strain  of  politics,  the  conclu- 
sion of  the  poem  addressed  to  Charles  : — 

"  The  discontented  now  are  only  they  ^ 

Whose  crimes  before  did  your  just  cause  betray : 
Of  those  your  edicts  some  reclaim  from  sin, 
But  most  your  life  and  blest  example  win. 
Oh  happy  prince  !  whom  Heaven  hath  taught  the  way, 
By  paying  vows  to  have  more  vows  to  pay  ! 
Oh  happy  age  !  Oh  times  like  those  alone, 
By  fate  reserved  for  great  Augustus'  throne  ! 
When  the  joint  growth  of  arms  and  arts  foreshow 
The  world  a  monarch,  and  that  monarch  you." 


\. 


LITERATURE  OF  THE   RESTORATION.  99 

Such  were  the  personal  elements,  if  we  may  so  call  them, 
available  at  the  beginning  of  the  reign  of  Charles  II.,  for  the 
commencement  of  a  new  era  in  English  literature.  Let  us 
see  next,  what  were  the  more  pronounced  tendencies  visible 
amid  these  personal  elements ;  in  other  words,  what  tone  of 
moral  sentiment,  and  what  peculiarities  of  literary  style  and 
method  were  then  in  the  ascendant,  and  likely  to  determine 
the  character  of  the  budding  authorship. 

It  was  pre-eminently  clear  that  the  forthcoming  literature 
would  be  Royalist  and  anti-Puritan.  With  the  exception  of 
Milton,  there  was  not  one  man  of  known  literary  power, 
whose  heart  still  beat  as  it  did  when  Cromwell  sat  on  the 
throne,  and  whose  muse  magnanimously  disdained  the  change 
that  had  befallen  the  nation.  Puritanism,  as  a  whole,  was 
driven  back  into  the  concealed  vitals  of  the  community,  to 
sustain  itself  meanwhile  as  a  sectarian  theology  lurking  in 
chapels  and  conventicles,  and  only  to  re-appear  after  a  lapse 
of  years  as  an  ingredient  in  the  philosophy  of  Locke  and  his 
contemporaries.  The  literary  men  who  stepped  forward  to 
lead  the  literature  of  the  Restoration  were  royalists  and  cour- 
tiers— some  of  them  honest  cavaliers  rejoicing  at  being  let 
loose  from  the  restraints  of  the  Commonwealth ;  others,  time- 
servers,  making  up  for  delay  by  the  fulsome  excess  of  their 
zeal  for  the  new  state  of  things.  It  was  part  of  this  change 
that  there  should  be  an  affectation,  even  where  there  was  not 
the  reality,  of  lax  morals.  According  to  the  sarcasm  of  the 
time,  it  was  necessary  now  for  those  who  would  escape  the 
risk  of  being  thought  Puritans,  to  contract  a  habit  of  swear- 
ing, and  pretend  to  be  great  rakes.  And  this  increase,  both 
in  the  practice  and  in  the  profession  of  profligacy,  at  once 
connected  itself  with  that  institution  of  English  society, 
which,  from  the  very  fact  that  it  had  been  suppressed  by  the 
Puritans,  now  became  doubly  attractive  and  popular.  The 
same  revolution  which  restored  royalty  in  England  re-opened 
the  play-houses ;  and  in  them,  as  the  established  organs  of 
popular  sentiment,  all  the  anti-Puritanic  tendencies  of  the 
time  hastened  to  find  vent.  The  custom  of  having  female 
actors  on  the  stage  for  female  parts,  instead  of  boys  as  hereto- 

h2 


100  DRYDEN,   AND  THE 

fore,  was  now  permanently  introduced,  and  brought  many 
scandals  along  with  it.  Whether,  as  some  surmise,  the  very 
suppression  of  the  theatres  during  the  reign  of  Puritanism 
contributed  to  tlieir  unusual  corruptness  when  they  were 
again  allowed  by  law,  by  damming  up,  as  it  were,  a  quantity 
of  social  pruriency  which  had  afterwards  to  be  let  loose  in 
a  mass,  it  is  not  easy  to  say ;  it  is  certain,  however,  that  at  no 
time  in  this  country  did  impurity  run  so  openly  at  riot  in  any 
literary  guise  as  in  the  Drama  of  the  Eestoration.  It  seemed 
as  if  the  national  cranium  of  England,  to  use  a  phrenological 
figure,  had  suddenly  been  contracted  in  every  other  direction 
so  as  to  permit  an  inordinate  protuberance  of  that  particular 
region  which  is  situated  above  the  nape  of  the  neck.  This 
enormous  preponderance  of  the  back  of  the  head  in  literature 
was  most  conspicuously  exhibited  in  Comedy.  Every  comedy 
that  was  produced  represented  life  as  a  meagre  action  of  per- 
sons and  interests  on  a  slight  proscenium  of  streets  and  bits  of 
green  field,  behind  which  lay  the  real  business,  transacted  in 
stews.  To  set  against  this,  it  is  true,  there  was  a  so-called 
Tragic  Drama.  The  tragedy  that  was  now  in  favour,  how- 
ever, was  no  longer  the  old  English  tragedy  of  rich  and  com- 
plex materials,  but  the  French  tragedy  of  heroic  declamation. 
Familiarized  by  their  stay  in  France  with  the  tragic  style  of 
Corneille  and  other  dramatists  of  the  court  of  Louis  XIV.,  the 
royalists  brought  back  the  taste  with  them  into  England ;  and 
the  poets  who  catered  for  them  hastened  to  abandon  the 
Shakespearian  tragedy  with  its  large  range  of  time  and  action 
and  its  blank  verse,  and  to  put  on  the  stage  tragedies  of  sus- 
tained and  decorous  declamation  in  the  heroic  or  rhymed 
couplet,  conceived,  as  much  as  possible,  after  the  model  of 
Corneille.  Natural  to  the  French,  this  classic  or  regular 
style  accorded  ill  with  English  faculties  and  habits;  and 
Corneille  himself  would  have  been  horrified  at  the  slovenly 
and  laborious  attempts  of  the  English  in  imitation  of  his 
masterpieces.  The  efiect  of  French  influence  at  this  time, 
however,  on  English  literary  taste,  did  not  consist  merely  in 
the  introduction  of  the  heroic  or  rhymed  drama.  The  same 
influence  extended,  and,  in  some  respects,  beneficially,  to  all 

\. 


LITERATURE   OF  THE   RESTORATION.  101 

departments  of  English  literature.  It  helped,  for  example,  to 
correct  that  peculiar  style  of  so-called  "wit,"  which,  originating 
with  the  dregs  of  the  Elizabethan  age,  had  during  a  whole 
generation,  infected  English  prose  and  poetry,  but  more 
especially  the  latter.  The  characteristic  of  the  metaphysical 
school  of  poetry,  as  it  is  called,  which  took  its  rise  in  a  literary 
vice  perceptible  even  in  the  great  works  of  the  Elizabethan 
age,  and  of  which  Donne  and  Cowley  were  the  most  cele- 
brated representatives,  consisted  in  the  identification  of  mere 
intellectual  subtlety  with  poetic  genius.  To  spin  out  a  fan- 
tastic conceit,  to  pursue  a  thread  of  quaint  thought  as  long  as 
it  could  be  held  between  the  fingers  of  the  metre  without 
snapping,  and,  in  doing  so,  to  wind  it  about  as  many  odd  allu- 
sions to  the  real  world  as  possible,  and  introduce  as  many 
verbal  quibbles  as  possible,  was  the  aim  of  the  "  metaphysical 
poets."  Some  of  them,  like  Donne  and  Cowley,  were  men  of 
independent  merit ;  but  the  style  of  poetry  itself,  as  all  mo- 
dern readers  confess  by  the  alacrity  with  which  they  shy  out 
of  the  way  of  reprinted  specimens  of  it,  was  as  unprofitable 
an  investment  of  liuman  ingenuity  as  ever  was  attempted.  At 
the  period  of  the  Restoration,  and  partly  in  consequence  of 
French  influence,  this  kind  of  wit  was  falling  into  disrepute. 
There  were  still  practitioners  of  it ;  but,  on  the  whole,  a  more 
direct,  clear,  and  light  manner  of  writing  was  coming  into 
fashion.  Discourse  became  less  stiff  and  pedantic;  or,  as 
Dryden  himself  has  expressed  it,  "  the  fire  of  English  wit, 
which  was  before  stifled  under  a  constrained  melancholy  way 
of  breeding,  began  to  display  its  force  by  mixing  the  solidity 
of  our  nation  with  the  air  and  gaiety  of  our  neighbours." 
And  the  change  in  discourse  passed  without  difficulty  into 
literature,  calling  into  being  a  nimbler  style  of  wit,  a  more 
direct,  rapid,  and  decisive  manner  of  thought  and  expression, 
than  had  beseemed  authorship  before.  In  particular,  and 
apart  from  the  tendency  to  greater  directness  and  concision  of 
thought,  there  was  an  increased  attention  to  correctness  of  ex- 
pression. The  younger  literary  men  began  to  object  to  what 
they  called  the  involved  and  incorrect  syntax  of  the  writers  of 
the  previous  age,  and  to  pretend  themselves  to  greater  neatness 


102  DRYDEN,   AND  THE 

and  accuracy  in  the  construction  of  their  sentences.  It  was  at 
this  time,  for  example,  that  the  rule  of  not  ending  a  sentence 
with  a  preposition  or  other  little  word  began  to  be  attended 
to.  Whether  the  notion  of  correctness,  implied  in  this,  and 
other  such  rules,  was  a  true  notion,  and  whether  the  writers  of 
the  Restoration  excelled  their  Elizabethan  predecessors  in  this 
quality  of  correctness,  admits  of  being  doubted.  Certain  it 
is,  however,  that  a  change  in  the  mechanism  of  writing — this 
change  being  on  the  whole  towards  increased  neatness — did 
become  apparent  about  this  time.  The  change  was  visible  in 
prose ;  but  far  more  so  in  verse.  For,  to  conclude  this  enume- 
ration of  the  literary  signs  or  tendencies  of  the  age  of  the 
Restoration,  it  was  a  firm  belief  of  the  writers  of  the  period 
that  then,  for  the  first  time,  was  the  art  of  correct  English 
versification  exemplified  and  appreciated.  It  was,  we  say,  a 
firm  belief  of  the  time,  and,  indeed,  it  has  been  a  common- 
place of  criticism  ever  since,  that  Edmund  Waller  was  the 
first  poet  who  wrote  smooth  and  accurate  verse ;  that  in  this 
he  was  followed  by  Sir  John  Denham ;  and  that  these  two 
men  were,  so  to  speak,  reformers  of  English  metre.  "  Well- 
placing  of  words,  for  the  sweetness  of  pronunciation,  w^as  not 
known  till  Mr.  Waller  introduced  it,"  is  a  deliberate  state- 
ment of  Dryden  himself,  meant  to  apply  especially  to  verse. 
Now,  here,  again,  we  have  to  separate  a  matter  of  fact  from  a 
matter  of  doctrine.  To  aver,  with  such  specimens  of  older 
English  verse  before  us  as  the  works  of  Chaucer  and  Spenser, 
and  the  minor  poems  of  Milton,  that  it  was  Waller  or  any 
other  petty  writer  of  the  Restoration  that  first  taught  us 
sweetness,  or  smoothness,  or  even  correctness  of  verse,  is  so 
ridiculous,  that  the  currency  of  such  a  notion  can  only  be 
accounted  for  by  the  servility  with  which  small  critics  go  on 
repeating  whatever  any  one  big  critic  has  said.  That  Waller 
and  Denham,  however,  did  set  the  example  of  something  new 
in  the  manner  of  English  versification — which  "something" 
Dryden,  Pope,  and  other  poets  who  afterwards  adopted  it,  re- 
garded as  an  improvement, — needs  not  be  doubted.  For 
us,  it  IS  sufficient  in  the  meantime  to  recognise  the  change 
as  an  attempt  after  greater  neatness  of  mechanical  structure, 


LITERATURE   OF  THE  RESTORATION.  103 

leaving    open   the    question  whether  it  was   a  change  for 
the  better. 

It  was  natural  that  the  tendencies  of  English  literature  thus 
enumerated  should  be  represented  in  the  poet-laureate  for  the 
time  being.  Who  was  the  fit  man  to  be  appointed  laureate 
at  the  Restoration  ?  Milton  was  out  of  the  question,  having 
none  of  the  requisites.  Butler,  the  man  of  greatest  natural 
power  of  a  different  order,  and  possessing  certainly  as  much  of 
the  anti-Puritan  sentiment  as  Charles  and  his  corn-tiers  could 
have  desired  in  their  laureate,  was  not  yet  sufficiently  known, 
and  was,  besides,  neither  a  dramatist  nor  a  fine  gentleman. 
Cowley,  whom  public  opinion  would  have  pointed  out  as  best 
entitled  to  the  honour,  was  somehow  not  in  much  favour  at 
court,  and  was  spending  the  remainder  of  his  days  on  a  little 
property  near  Chertsey.  Waller  and  Denham  were  wealthy 
men,  with  whom  literature  was  but  an  amusement.  On  the 
whole,  Sir  William  Davenant  was  felt  to  be  the  proper  man 
for  the  office.  He  was  an  approved  royalist;  had,  in  fact, 
been  laureate  to  Charles  I.,  after  Ben  Jonson's  death  in  1637 ; 
and  had  sufiered  personally  in  the  cause  of  the  king.  He  was, 
moreover,  a  literary  man  by  profession.  He  had  been  an  actor 
and  a  theatre-manager  before  the  Commonwealth;  he  had 
been  the  first  to  start  a  theatre  after  the  relaxed  rule  of  Crom- 
well made  it  possible ;  and  he  was  one  of  the  first  to  attempt 
heroic  or  rhymed  tragedies  after  the  French  model.  He  was 
also,  far  more  than  Cowley,  a  wit  of  the  new  school ;  and,  as 
a  versifier,  he  practised,  with  no  small  reputation,  the  neat, 
lucid  style  introduced  by  Denham  and  Waller.  He  was  the 
author  of  an  epic  called  Gondihert^  written  in  rhymed  stanzas 
of  four  lines  each,  and  which  Hobbes  praised  as  showing 
"  more  shape  of  art,  health  of  morality,  and  vigour  and  beauty 
of  expression,"  than  any  poem  he  had  ever  read.  We  defy 
any  one  to  read  the  poem  now ;  but  there  have  been  worse 
things  written ;  and  it  has  the  merit  of  being  a  careful  and 
rather  serious  composition  by  a  man  who  had  industry,  educa- 
tion, and  taste,  but  no  genius.  The  only  awkwardness  in 
having  such  a  man  for  a  laureate  was,  that  he  had  no  nose. 
This  awkwardness,  however,  had  existed  at  the  time  of  his 


104  DEYDEN,   AND   THE 

first  appointment  in  the  preceding  reign.  At  least,  Suckling 
adverts  to  it  in  his  Session  of  the  Poets,  where  he  makes  the 
wits  of  that  time  contend  for  the  bays— 

"  Will  Davenant,  ashamed  of  a  foolish  miscliance, 
That  he  had  got  lately,  travelling  in  France, 
Modestly  hoped  the  handsomeness  of  's  muse 
Might  any  deformity  about  him  excuse. 

"  And  surely  the  company  would  have  been  content, 
If  they  could  have  found  any  precedent ; 
But  in  all  their  records,  either  in  verse  or  prose, 
There  was  not  one  laureate  without  a  nose." 

If  the  more  decorous  court  of  Charles  I.,  however,  overlooked 
this  facial  deficiencj,  it  w^as  not  for  that  of  Charles  II.  to  take 
objection  to  it ;  the  more  especially  as  it  might  be  regarded,  if 
Suckling's  insinuation  is  true,  as  entitling  the  poet  to  addi- 
tional sympathy  from  Charles  and  his  companions.  After  all, 
Davenant,  notwithstanding  his  misfortune,  seems  to  have  been 
not  the  worst  gentleman  about  Charles's  court,  either  in  morals 
or  manners.     Milton  is  said  to  have  known  and  liked  him. 

Davenant's  laureateship  extended  over  the  first  eight  years 
of  the  Restoration,  or  from  1660  to  1668.  Much  was  done  in 
these  eight  years  both  by  himself  and  others.  Heroic  plays 
and  comedies  were  produced  in  sufficient  abundance  to  supply 
the  two  theatres  then  open  in  London — one  of  them  called  the 
Duke's  company,  under  Davenant's  management;  the  other, 
the  King's  company,  under  the  management  of  an  actor  named 
Killigrew.  The  number  of  writers  for  the  stage  was  very 
great,  including  not  only  those  whose  names  have  been  men- 
tioned, but  others  new  to  fame.  The  literature  of  the  stage 
formed  by  far  the  largest  proportion  of  what  was  written,  or 
even  of  what  was  published.  Literary  efforts  of  other  kinds, 
however,  were  not  wanting.  Of  satires,  and  small  poems  in 
the  witty  or  amatory  style,  there  was  no  end.  The  publica- 
tion of  the  first  part  of  his  Hudibras  in  1663,  and  of  the  second 
in  1664,  drew  public  attention,  for  the  first  time,  to  a  man, 
already  past  his  fiftieth  year,  who  had  more  true  wit  in  him 
than  all  the  aristocratic  poets  put  together.  The  poem  was 
received  by  the  king  and  the  courtiers  with  roars  of  laughter ; 
quotations  from  it  were  in  everybody's  mouth  ;  but  notwith- 


LITERATURE   OF  THE   RESTORATION.  105 

standing  large  promises,  nothing  substantial  was  done  for  the 
author.  Meanwhile  Milton,  blind  and  gouty,  and  living  in  his 
house  near  Bunhill  Fields,  where  his  visitors  were  hardly  of 
the  kind  that  admired  Butler's  poem,  was  calmly  proceeding 
with  his  Paradise  Lost.  The  poem  was  finished  and  published 
in  1667,  leaving  Milton  free  for  other  work.  Cowley,  who 
would  have  welcomed  such  a  poem,  and  whose  praise  Milton 
would  have  valued  more  than  that  of  any  other  contemporary, 
died  in  the  year  of  its  publication.  Davenant  may  have  read 
it  before  his  deatli  in  the  following  year ;  but  perhaps  the  only 
poet  of  the  time  who  hailed  its  appearance  with  enthusiasm 
adequate  to  the  occasion,  was  Milton's  personal  friend,  Marvel. 
Gradually,  however,  copies  of  the  poem  found  their  way  about 
town,  and  drew  public  attention  once  more  to  Cromwell's  old 
secretary. 

The  laureateship  remained  vacant  two  years  after  Dave- 
nan  t's  death  ;  and  then  it  was  conferred — on  whom  ?  There 
can  be  little  doubt  that,  of  those  eligible  to  it,  Butler  had,  in 
some  respects,  the  best  title.  The  author  of  Hudihras,  how- 
ever, seems  to  have  been  one  of  those  ill-conditioned  sarcastic 
men  whom  patronage  never  comes  near,  and  who  are  left,  as 
a  matter  of  necessity,  to  the  bitter  enjoyment  of  their  own 
humours.  There  does  not  seem  to  have  been  even  a  question 
of  appointing  him  ;  and  the  office,  the  income  of  which  would 
have  been  a  competence  to  him,  was  conferred  on  a  man  twenty 
years  his  junior,  and  whose  circumstances  required  it  less — 
John  Dry  den.  The  appointment,  which  was  made  in  August, 
1670,  conferred  on  Dryden  not  only  the  laureateship,  but  also 
the  office  of  "  historiographer  royal,"  which  chanced  to  be 
vacant  at  the  same  time.  The  income  accruing  from  the  two 
offices  thus  conjoined  was  200 Z.  a-year,  which  was  about  as 
valuable  then  as  600^.  a-year  would  be  now ;  and  it  was 
expressly  stated  in  the  deed  of  appointment  that  these  emolu- 
ments were  conferred  on  Dryden  "  in  consideration  of  his 
many  acceptable  services  done  to  his  majesty,  and  from  an 
observation  of  his  learning  and  eminent  abilities,  and  his 
great  skill  and  elegant  style  both  in  verse  and  prose."  At 
the  time  of  the  Restoration,  or  even  for  a  year  or  two  after  it, 


106  DRYDEN,    AND   THE 

such  language  could,  by  no  stretch  of  courtesy,  have  been 
applied  to  Dryden.  At  that  time,  as  we  have  seen,  Dryden, 
though  aheady  past  his  thirtieth  year,  was  certainly  about  the 
least  distinguished  person  in  the  little  band  of  wits  that  were 
looking  forward  to  the  good  time  coming.  He  was  a  stout, 
li-esh-complexioned  man,  in  grey  drugget,  who  had  w^ritten 
some  robust  stanzas  on  Cromwell's  death,  and  a  short  poem, 
also  robust,  but  rather  wooden,  on  Charles's  return.  That  was 
about  all  that  was  then  known  about  him.  What  had  he 
done,  in  the  interval,  to  raise  him  so  high,  and  to  make  it 
natural  for  the  court  to  prefer  him  to  what  was  in  fact  the 
titular  supremacy  of  English  literature,  over  the  heads  of 
others  who  might  be  supposed  to  have  claims,  and  especially 
over  poor  battered  old  Butler?  A  glance  at  Dryden's  life, 
during  Davenant's  laureateship,  or  between  1660  and  1670, 
will  answer  this  question. 

Dryden's  connexion  with  the  politics  of  the  Protectorate 
had  not  been  such  as  to  make  his  immediate  and  cordial 
attachment  to  the  cause  of  restored  royalty  either  very 
strange  or  very  unhandsome.  Not  committed  either  by 
strong  personal  convictions,  or  by  acts,  to  the  Puritan  side, 
he  hastened  to  show  that,  whatever  the  older  Northampton- 
shire Drydens  and  their  relatives  might  think  of  the  matter, 
he,  for  one,  was  willing  to  be  a  loyal  subject  of  Charles,  both 
in  church  and  in  state.  This  main  point  being  settled,  he 
had  only  farther  to  consider  into  what  particular  walk  of 
industry,  now  that  official  employment  under  government  was 
cut  off,  he  should  carry  his  loyalty  and  his  powers.  The 
choice  was  not  difficult.  There  was  but  one  career  open  for 
him,  or  suitable  to  his  tastes  and  qualifications — that  of 
general  authorship.  We  say  "  general  authorship ;  "  for  it  is 
important  to  remark  that  Dryden  was  by  no  means  nice  in  his 
choice  of  work.  He  was  ready  for  anything  of  a  literary  kind 
to  which  he  was,  or  could  make  himself,  competent.  He  had 
probably  a  preference  for  verse ;  but  he  had  no  disinclination 
to  prose,  if  that  article  was  in  demand  in  the  market.  He  had 
a  store  of  acquirements,  academic  and  other,  that  fitted  him 
for  an  intelligent  apprehension  of  whatever  was  going  on  in 


I 


LITERATUEE   OF  THE   RESTOEATION.  107 

any  of  the  London  circles  of  that  day — the  circle  of  the 
scholars,  that  of  the  amateurs  of  natural  science,  or  that  of 
the  mere  wits  and  men  of  letters.  He  was,  in  fact,  a  man  of 
general  intellectual  strength,  which  he  was  willing  to  let  out 
in  any  kind  of  tolerably  honest  intellectual  service  that  might 
be  in  fashion.  This  being  the  case,  he  set  the  right  way  to 
work  to  make  himself  known  in  quarters  where  such  service 
was  going  on.  He  had  about  40?.  a-year  of  inherited  fortune ; 
which  means  something  equivalent  to  120?.  a-year  with  us. 
With  this  income  to  supply  his  immediate  wants,  he  went  to 
live  with  Herringman,  a  bookseller  and  publisher  in  the  New 
Exchange.  What  was  the  precise  nature  of  his  agreement 
with  Herringman,  cannot  be  ascertained.  His  literary  enemies 
used  afterwards  to  say  that  he  was  Herringman's  hack,  and 
wrote  prefaces  for  him.  However  this  may  be,  there  were 
higher  conveniences  in  being  connected  with  Heri'ingman. 
He  was  one  of  the  best  known  of  the  London  publishers  of 
the  day,  was  a  personal  friend  of  Davenant,  and  had  almost 
all  the  wits  of  the  day  as  his  customers  and  occasional  visitors. 
Tlu'ough  him,  in  all  probability.  Dry  den  first  became  ac- 
quainted with  some  of  these  men,  including  Davenant  himself, 
Cowley,  and  a  third  person  of  considerable  note  at  that  time 
as  an  aristocratic  dabbler  in  literature — Sir  Eobert  Howard, 
son  of  the  Earl  of  Berkshire.  That  the  impression  he  made 
on  these  men  and  others,  in  or  out  of  the  Herringman  circle, 
was  no  mean  one,  is  proved  by  the  fact  that,  in  1663,  we  find 
him  a  member  of  the  Koyal  Society,  the  foundation  of  which 
by  royal  charter  had  taken  place  in  the  previous  year.  The 
number  of  members  was  then  one  hundred  and  fifteen,  in- 
cluding such  scientific  celebrities  of  the  time  as  Boyle,  Wallis, 
Wilkins,  Christopher  Wren,  Dr.  Isaac  Barrow,  Evelyn,  and 
Hooke,  besides  such  titled  amateurs  of  experimental  science 
as  the  Duke  of  Buckingham,  the  Marquis  of  Dorchester,  the 
Earls  of  Devonshire,  Crawford,  and  Northampton,  and  Lords 
Brouncker,  Cavendish,  and  Berkeley.  Among  the  more 
purely  literary  members  were  Waller,  Denham,  Cowley,  and 
Sprat,  afterwards  Bishop  of  Kochester.  The  admission  of 
Dryden  into  such  company  is  a  proof  that  already  he  was 


108  DRYDEN,   AND  THE 

socially  a  man  of  mark.  As  we  have  Diyden's  own  confession 
that  he  was  somewhat  dull  and  sluggish  in  conversation,  and 
the  testimony  of  others  that  he  was  the  very  reverse  of  a 
"bustling  or  pushing  man,  and  rather  avoided  society  than 
sought  it,  we  must  suppose  that  he  had  been  found  out.  as  it 
were,  in  spite  of  himself.  We  can  fancy  him  at  Herring- 
man's,  or  elsewhere,  sitting  as  one  of  a  group  with  Davenant, 
Howard,  and  others,  taking  snuff  and  listening,  rather  than 
speaking ;  yet,  when  he  did  speak,  doing  so  with  such  judg- 
ment, as  to  make  his  chair  one  of  the  most  important  in  the 
room,  and  impress  all  with  the  conviction  that  that  Dryden 
was  a  solid  fellow.  He  seems  also  to  have  taken  an  interest 
in  the  scientific  gossip  of  the  day  about  magnetism,  the 
circulation  of  the  blood,  and  the  prospects  of  the  Baconian 
system  of  philosophy ;  and  this  may  have  helped  to  bring 
him  in  contact  with  men  like  Boyle,  Wren,  and  Wallis.  At 
all  events,  if  the  Society  elected  him  on  trust,  he  soon  justi- 
fied their  choice  by  taking  his  place  among  the  best  known 
members  of  what  was  then  the  most  important  class  of  literary 
men — the  writers  for  the  stage.  His  first  drama,  a  lumbering 
prose-comedy,  entitled  The  Wild  Gallant,  was  produced  at 
Killigrew's  Theatre  in  February,  1662-3;  and,  though  its 
success  was  very  indifierent_,  he  was  not  discouraged  from  a 
second  venture  in  a  tragi-comedy,  entitled  The  Rival  Ladies, 
written  partly  in  blank  verse,  partly  in  heroic  rhyme,  and 
produced  at  the  same  theatre.  This  attempt  was  more  suc- 
cessful ;  and,  in  1664,  there  was  produced,  as  the  joint  com- 
position of  Dryden  and  Sir  Robert  Howard,  an  attempt  in 
the  style  of  the  regular  heroic  or  rhymed  tragedy,  called 
The  Indian  Queen.  The  date  of  this  effort  of  literary  co- 
partnership between  Dryden  and  his  aristocratic  friend, 
coincides  with  the  formation  of  a  more  intimate  connexion 
between  them,  by  Dryden's  marriage  with  Sir  Eobert's  sister. 
Lady  Elizabeth  Howard.  The  marriage,  the  result,  it  would 
seem,  of  a  visit  of  the  poet,  in  the  company  of  Sir  Robert,  to 
the  Earl  of  Berkshire's  seat  in  Wilts,  took  place  in  November, 
1663  ;  so  that  when  The  Indian  Queen  was  written,  the  two 
authors  were  already  brothers-in-law.   The  marriage  of  a  man 


LITERATURE   OF  THE   RESTORATION.  109 

in  the  poet's  circumstances  with  an  earVs  daughter,  was 
neither  altogether  strange  nor  altogether  such  as  to  preclude 
remark.  The  earl  was  poor,  and  able  to  afford  his  daughter 
but  a  small  settlement ;  and  Drjden  was  a  man  of  sufficiently 
good  family,  his  grandfather  having  been  a  baronet,  and  some 
of  his  living  relations  having  landed  property  in  Northamp- 
tonshire. The  property  remaining  for  the  support  of  Dryden's 
brothers  and  sisters,  however,  after  the  subduction  of  his  own 
share  as  the  eldest  son,  had  been  too  scanty  to  keep  them  all 
in  their  original  station ;  and  some  of  them  had  fallen  a  little 
lower  in  the  world.  One  sister,  in  particular,  had  married  a 
tobacconist  in  London — a  connexion  not  likely  to  be  agreeable 
to  the  Earl  of  Berkshire  and  his  sons,  if  they  took  the 
trouble  to  become  cognisant  of  it.  Dryden  himself  probably 
moved  conveniently  enough  between  the  one  relationship  and 
the  other.  If  his  aristocratic  brother-in-law,  Sir  Robert,  could 
write  plays  with  him  and  the  like,  his  other  brother-in-law, 
the  tobacconist  of  Newgate-street,  may  have  administered  to 
his  comfort  in  other  ways.  It  is  known  that  the  poet,  in  his 
later  life  at  least,  was  peculiarly  fastidious  in  the  article  of 
snuff,  abhorring  all  ordinary  snuffs,  and  satisfied  only  with 
a  mixture  which  he  prepared  himself ;  and  it  is  not  unlikely 
that  the  foundation  of  this  fastidiousness  may  have  been  laid 
in  the  facilities  afforded  him  originally  in  his  brother-in-law's 
shop.  The  tobacconist's  wife,  of  course,  would  be  pleased 
now  and  then  to  have  a  visit  from  her  brother  John;  but 
whether  Lady  Elizabeth  ever  went  to  see  her,  is  rather 
doubtful.  According  to  all  accounts,  Dryden's  experience  of 
this  lady  was  not  such  as  to  improve  his  ideas  of  the  matri- 
monial state,  or  to  give  encouragement  to  future  poets  to 
marry  earls'  daughters. 

In  consequence  of  the  ravages  of  the  Great  Plague  in  1665, 
and  the  subsequent  disaster  of  the  Great  Fire  in  1666,  there 
was  for  some  time  a  total  cessation  in  London  of  theatrical 
performances  and  all  other  amusements.  Dryden,  like  most 
other  persons  who  were  not  tied  to  town  by  business,  spent 
the  greater  part  of  this  gloomy  period  in  the  country.  He 
availed  himself  of  the  interruption  thus  given  to  his  dramatic 


110  DRYDEN,   AND  THE 

labours,  to  produce  his  first  writings  of  any  moment  out  of 
that  field,  his  Annus  Mirabilis,  and  his  Essay  on  Dramatic 
Poesy.  The  first,  an  attempt  to  invest  with  heroic  interest, 
and  celebrate  in  sonorous  stanzas,  the  events  of  the  famous 
year  1QQ6-Q>,  including  not  only  the  Great  Fire,  but  also  the 
incidents  of  a  naval  war  then  going  on  against  the  Dutch, 
must  have  done  more  to  bring  Dryden  into  the  favourable 
notice  of  the  King,  the  Duke  of  York,  and  other  high  person- 
ages eulogized  in  it,  than  anything  he  had  yet  written.  It 
was,  in  fact,  a  kind  of  short  epic  on  the  topics  of  the  year, 
such  as  Dryden  might  have  been  expected  to  write,  if  he  had 
been  already  doing  laureate's  duty ;  and  unless  Sir  William 
Davenant  was  of  very  easy  temper,  he  must  have  been  rather 
annoyed  at  so  obvious  an  invasion  of  his  province,  notwith- 
standing the  compliment  the  poet  had  paid  him  by  adopting 
the  stanza  of  his  Gondihert,  and  imitating  his  manner. 
Scarcely  *  less  effective  in  another  way  must  have  been  the 
prose  "  Essay  on  Dramatic  Poesy  " — a  vigorous  treatise  on 
various  matters  of  poetry  and  criticism  then  much  discussed. 
It  contained,  among  other  things,  a  defence  of  the  Heroic  or 
Rhymed  Tragedy  against  those  who  preferred  the  older 
Elizabethan  Tragedy  of  blank  verse ;  and  so  powerful  a  con- 
tribution was  it  to  this  great  controversy  of  the  day,  that  it 
produced  an  immediate  sensation  in  all  literary  circles.  Sir 
Robert  Howard,  who  now  ranked  himself  among  the  partisans 
of  blank  verse,  took  occasion  to  express  his  dissent  from  some 
of  the  opinions  expounded  in  it ;  and,  as  Dryden  replied  rather 
tartly,  a  temporary  quarrel  ensued  between  the  two  brothers- 
in-law. 

On  the  re-opening  of  the  theatres  in  1667,  Dryden,  his 
reputation  increased  by  the  two  performances  just  mentioned, 
stepped  forward  again  as'  a  dramatist.  A  heroic  tragedy 
called  The  Indian  Emperor,  which  he  had  prepared  before  the 
recess,  and  which,  indeed,  had  then  been  acted,  was  repro- 
duced with  great  success,  and  established  Dryden's  position 
as  a  practitioner  of  heroic  and  rhymed  tragedy.  This  was 
followed  by  a  comedy,  in  mixed  blank  verse  and  prose, 
called  The  Maiden  Queen;  this  by  a  prose-comedy  called 


LITERATURE   OF  THE   RESTORATION.  Ill 

Sir  Martin  Mar-all;  and  tliis  again,  by  an  adaptation,  in 
conjunction  with  Sir  William  Davenant,  of  Shakespeare's 
Tempest.  The  two  last  were  produced  at  Davenant's  theatre, 
whereas  all  Dryden's  former  pieces  had  been  written  for 
Killigrew's,  or  the  King's  company.  About  this  time,  how- 
ever, an  arrangement  was  made  which  secured  Dryden's 
services  exclusively  for  Killigrew's  house.  By  the  terms  of 
the  agreement,  Dryden  engaged  to  supply  the  house  with 
three  plays  every  year,  in  return  for  which,  he  was  admitted 
a  shareholder  in  the  profits  of  the  theatre  to  the  extent  of  one 
share  and  a-half.  The  first  fruits  of  the  bargain  were  a 
prose-comedy  called  TJie  Mock  Astrologer,  and  two  heroic 
tragedies  under  the  titles  Tyrannic  Love,  and  The  Conquest  of 
Granada,  the  latter  being  in  two  parts.  These  were  all  pro- 
duced between  1668  and  1670,  and  the  tragedies,  in  particular, 
seem  to  have  taken  the  town  by  storm,  and  placed  Dryden, 
beyond  dispute,  at  the  head  of  all  the  heroic  playwrights  of 
the  day. 

The  extent  and  nature  of  Dryden's  popularity  as  a  dramatist 
about  this  time  may  be  judged  by  the  following  extract  from 
the  diary  of  the  omnipresent  Pepys,  referring  to  the  first  per- 
formance of  the  Maiden  Queen : — "  After  dinner,  with  my 
wife  to  see  the  Maiden  Queene,  a  new  play  by  Dryden, 
mightily  commended  for  the  regularity  of  it,  and  the  strain 
and  wit;  and  the  truth  is,  the  comical  part  done  by  Nell 
(Nell  Gwyn),  which  is  Florimell,  that  I  never  can  hope  to 
see  the  like  done  again  by  man  or  woman.  The  King  and 
Duke  of  York  were  at  the  play.  But  so  great  a  performance 
of  a  comical  part  was  never,  I  believe,  in  the  world  before  as 
Nell  do  this,  both  as  a  mad  girle,  then  most  and  best  of  all 
when  she  comes  in  like  a  young  gallant,  and  hath  the  motions 
and  carriage  of  a  spark  the  most  that  ever  I  saw  any  man 
have.  It  makes  me,  I  confess,  admire  her."  But  even  Nell's 
performance  in  this  comedy  was  nothing  compared  to  one 
part  of  her  performance  afterwards  in  the  tragedy  of  Tyrannic 
Love.  Probably  there  was  never  such  a  scene  of  ecstasy  in 
a  theatre,  as  when  Nell,  after  acting  the  character  of  a  tragic 
princess  in  this  play,  and  killing  herself  at  the  close  in  a 


112  DRYDEN,   AND   THE 

grand  passage  of  heroism  and  supernatural  virtue,  had  to 
start  up  as  she  was  being  borne  off  the  stage  dead,  and 
resume  her  natural  character,  first  addressing  her  bearer  in 
these  words : — 

"  Hold  !  are  you  mad  ?  you  d d  confounded  dog ; 

I  am  to  rise,  and  speak  the  epilogue." 

and  then  running  to  the  footlights,  and  beginning  her  speech 
to  the  audience : — 

"  I  come,  kind  gentlemen,  strange  news  to  tell  ye, 
I  am  the  ghost  of  poor  departed  Nelly. 
Sweet  ladies,  be  not  frighted ;  I'll  be  civil : 
I'm  what  I  was — a  little  harmless  devil."  &c.  &c. 

It  is  a  tradition  that  it  was  this  epilogue  that  effected  Nell's 
conquest  of  the  king,  and  that  he  was  so  fascinated  with  her 
manner  of  delivering  it,  that  he  went  behind  the  scenes  after 
the  play  was  over,  and  carried  her  off  that  very  night.  Ah ! 
and  it  is  a  hundred  and  eighty-four  years  since  that  fasci- 
nating run  to  the  footlights  took  place,  and  the  swarthy  face 
of  the  monarch  was  seen  laughing,  and  the  audience  shrieked 
and  clapped  with  delight,  and  Pepys  bustled  about  the  boxes, 
and  Dryden  sat  looking  placidly  on,  contented  with  his 
success,  and  wondering  how  much  of  it  was  owing  to  Nelly! 

One  can  see  how,  even  if  the  choice  had  been  made  strictly 
with  a  reference  to  the  claims  of  the  candidates,  it  would  have 
been  felt  that  Dryden,  and  not  Butler,  was  the  proper  man  to 
succeed  Davenant  in  the  laureateship.  If  Butler  had  shewn 
the  more  original  vein  of  talent  in  one  peculiar  walk,  Dryden 
had  proved  himself  the  man  of  greatest  general  strength, 
in  whom  were  more  broadly  represented  the  various  literary 
tendencies  of  his  time.  The  author  of  ten  plays,  four  of  which 
were  stately  rhymed  tragedies,  and  the  rest  comedies  in  prose 
and  blank  verse ;  the  author,  also,  of  various  occasional  poems, 
one  of  which,  the  Annus  Mirahilis,  was  noticeable  on  its  own 
account  as  the  best  poem  of  current  history;  the  author, 
moreover,  of  one  express  prose-treatise  and  of  various  shorter 
prose  dissertations  in  the  shape  of  prefaces  and  the  like,  pre- 
fixed to  his  separate  plays  and  poems,  in  which  the  principles 
of  literature  were  discussed  in  a  manner  at  once  masterly  and 
adapted  to  the  prevailing  taste— Dryden  was,  on  the  whole. 


LITERATURE   OF  THE   RESTORATION.  113^ 

far  more  likely  to  perform  well  that  part  of  a  laureate's  duties 
which  consisted  in  supervising  and  leading  the  general  litera- 
ture of  his  age,  than  a  man  whose  reputation,  though  justlj 
great,  had  been  acquired  by  one  continuous  effort  in  the 
single  department  of  burlesque.  Accordingly,  Dryden  was 
promoted  to  the  post,  and  Butler  was  left  to  finish,  on  his 
own  scanty  resources,  the  remaining  portion  of  his  Hudihras, 
varying  the  occupation  by  jotting  down  those  scraps  of  cynical 
thought  which  were  found  among  his  posthumous  papers,  and 
which  show  that  towards  the  end  of  his  days  there  were  other 
things  that  he  hated  and  would  have  lashed  besides  Puri- 
tanism.    Thus : — 


'Tis  a  strange  age  we've  lived  in,  and  a  lewd 
As  e'er  the  sun  in  all  his  travels  viewed." 


Again : 


**  The  greatest  saints  and  sinners  have  been  made 
Of  proselytes  of  one  another's  trade." 

Again : 

"  Authority  is  a  disease  and  a  cure, 
Which  men  can  neither  want  nor  well  endure." 

And  again,  with  an  obvious  reference  to  his  own  case : — 

"  Dame  Fortune,  some  men's  titular, 
Takes  charge  of  them  without  their  care, 
Does  all  their  drudgery  and  work, 
Like  fairies,  for  them  in  the  dark ; 
Conducts  them  blindfold,  and  advances 
The  naturals  by  blinder  chances ; 
While  others  by  desert  and  wit 
Could  never  make  the  matter  hit ; 
But  still,  the  better  they  deserve, 
Are  but  the  abler  thought  to  starve." 

Dryden,  at  the  time  of  his  appointment  to  the  laureateship, 
was  in  his  fortieth  year, — a  circumstance  worth  noting,  if  we 
would  realize  his  position,  as  laureate,  among  his  literary 
contemporaries.  Of  these  contemporaries  there  were  some 
who,  as  being  his  seniors,  would  feel  themselves  free  from  all 
obligations  to  pay  him  respect.  To  octogenarians  like 
Hobbes  and  Izaak  Walton,  he  was  but  a  boy ;  and  even  from 
Waller,  Milton,  Butler,  and  Marvel,  all  of  whom  lived  to  see 
him  in  the  laureate's  chair,  he  could  only  look  for  that  ap- 
proving recognition,  totally  distinct  from  reverence,  which 

I 


114  DRYDEN,   AND  THE 

men  of  sixty-five,  sixty,  and  fifty-five  bestow  on  their  full- 
grown  juniors.  Such  an  amount  of  recognition  he  seems  to 
have  received  from  all  of  them.  Butler  indeed,  does  not  seem 
to  have  taken  very  kindly  to  him :  and  it  stands  on  record,  as 
Milton's  opinion  of  Dryden's  powers  about  this  period,  that 
he  thought  him  ''  a  rhymer  but  no  poet."  But  Butler,  who 
went  about  snarling  at  most  things,  and  was  irreverent 
enough  to  think  the  Royal  Society  itself  little  better  than 
a  humbug,  was  not  the  man  from  whom  a  laudatory  estimate 
of  anybody  was  to  be  expected ;  and,  though  Milton's  criticism 
is  too  precious  to  be  thrown  away,  and  will  even  be  found  on 
investigation  to  be  not  so  far  amiss,  if  the  moment  at  wliich  it 
was  given  is  duly  borne  in  mind,  yet  it  is,  after  all,  not 
Milton's  opinion  of  Dryden's  general  literary  capacity,  but 
only  his  opinion  of  his  claims  to  be  called  a  poet.  Dryden, 
on  his  part,  to  whose  charge  any  want  of  veneration  for  his 
great  literary  predecessors  cannot  be  imputed,  and  whose 
faculty  of  appreciating  the  most  various  kinds  of  excellence 
was  conspicuously  large,  would  probably  have  been  more 
grieved  than  indignant  at  this  indifference  of  men  like  Butler 
and  Milton  to  his  rising  fame.  He  had  an  unfeigned  admira- 
tion for  the  author  of  Hudihras  ;  and  there  was  not  a  man  in 
England  who  more  profoundly  revered  the  poet  of  Paradise 
Lost,  and  more  dutifully  testified  this  reverence  both  by  acts 
of  personal  attention  and  by  written  expressions  of  allegiance 
to  him  while  he  was  yet  alive.  It  would  have  pained  Dryden 
much,  we  believe,  to  know  that  the  great  Puritan  poet,  whom 
he  made  it  a  point  of  duty  to  go  and  see  now  and  then  in  his 
solitude,  and  of  whom  he  is  reported  to  have  said,  on  reading 
the  Paradise  Lost,  "  This  man  cuts  us  all  out,  and  the 
ancients,  too,"  thought  no  better  of  him  than  that  he  was 
a  rhymer.  But,  however  he  may  have  felt  himself  related  to 
those  seniors  who  were  vanishing  from  the  stage,  or  whose 
literary  era  was  in  the  past,  it  was  in  a  conscious  spirit  of 
superiority  that  he  confronted  the  generation  of  his  coevals 
and  juniors,  the  natural  subjects  of  his  laureateship.  Setting 
aside  such  men  as  Locke  and  Barrow,  belonging  more  to 
other  departments  than  that  of  literature  proper,  there  were 


LITERATURE  OF  THE   RESTORATION.  115 

lione  of  these  coevals  or  juniors  who  were  entitled  to  dispute 
liis  authority.  There  was  the  Duke  of  Buckingham,  a  year 
or  two  older  than  Dry  den,  at  once  the  greatest  wit  and  the 
gTeatest  profligate  about  Charles's  court,  but  whose  attempts  as 
a  comic  dramatist  were  little  more  than  occasional  eccentrici- 
ties. There  were  the  Earls  of  Dorset  and  Eoscommon,  both 
about  Dry  den's  age,  and  both  cultivated  men  and  respectable 
versifiers.  There  was  Thomas  Sprat,  afterwards  Bishop  of 
Rochester,  and  now  chaplain  to  his  grace  of  Buckingham, 
five  years  younger  than  Dry  den,  his  fellow-member  in  the 
Royal  Society,  and  with  considerable  pretensions  to  literary 
excellence.  There  was  the  witty  rake.  Sir  Charles  Sedley, 
a  man  of  frolic,  like  Buckingham,  some  seven  years  Dryden's 
junior,  and  the  author  of  at  least  three  comedies  and  three 
tragedies.  There  was  the  still  more  witty  rake.  Sir  George 
Etherege,  of  about  the  same  age,  the  author  of  two  comedies, 
produced  between  1660  and  1670,  which,  for  ease  and  sprightly 
fluency,  surpassed  anything  that  Dry  den  had  done  in  the  comic 
style.  But  "  gentle  George,"  as  he  was  called,  was  incor- 
rigibly lazy ;  and  it  did  not  seem  as  if  the  public  would  get 
anything  more  from  him.  In  his  place  had  come  another 
gentleman-writer,  young  William  Wycherley,  whose  first 
comedy  had  been  written  before  Dryden's  laureateship, 
though  it  was  not  acted  till  1672,  and  who  was  already 
famous  as  a  wit.  Of  precisely  the  same  age  as  Wycherley, 
and  with  a  far  greater  quantity  of  comic  writing  in  him, 
whatever  might  be  thought  of  the  quality,  was  Thomas 
Shadwell,  whose  bulky  body  was  a  perpetual  source  of  jest 
against  him,  though  he  himself  vaunted  it  as  one  of  his  many 
resemblances  to  Ben  Jonson.  The  contemporary  opinion  of 
these  two  last-named  comic  poets,  Wycherley  and  Shadwell, 
after  they  came  to  be  better  known,  is  expressed  in  these 
lines  from  a  poem  of  Rochester's : — 

"  Of  all  our  modern  wits,  none  seem  to  me 
Once  to  have  touched  upon  true  comedy, 
But  hasty  Shadwell  and  slow  "Wycherley. 
Shadwell's  unfinished  works  do  yet  impart 
Great  proofs  of  force  of  Nature,  none  of  Art. 
With  just  bold  strokes  he  dashes  here  and  there, 
Showing  great  mastery  with  little  care ; 

I  2 


116  DRYDEN,   AND  THE 

Scorning  to  varaish  his  good  touches  o'er, 
To  make  the  fools  and  women  praise  the  more. 
But  Wycherley  earns  hard  whate'er  he  gains ; 
He  wants  no  judgment,  and  he  spares  no  pains; 
He  frequently  excels,  and,  at  the  least, 
Makes  fewer  faults  than  any  of  the  rest." 

The  author  of  these  lines,  the  notorious  Wilmot,  Earl  of 
Rochester,  was  also  one  of  Dryden's  literary  subjects.  He 
was  but  twenty-two  years  of  age  when  Dryden  became 
laureate;  but  bsfore  ten  years  of  that  laureateship  were  over 
he  had  blazed  out,  in  rapid  debauchery,  his  wretchedly- spent 
life.  Younger  by  three  years  than  Rochester,  and  also 
destined  to  a  short  life,  though  more  of  misery  than  of  crime, 
was  Thomas  Otway,  of  whose  six  tragedies  and  four  comedies, 
all  produced  during  the  laureateship  of  Dryden,  one  at  least 
has  taken  a  place  in  our  dramatic  literature,  and  is  read  still 
for  its  power  and  pathos.  Associated  with  Otway's  name  is 
that  of  Nat.  Lee,  more  than  Otway's  match  in  fury,  and  who, 
after  a  brief  career  as  a  tragic  dramatist  and  drunkard, 
became  an  inmate  of  Bedlam.  Another  writer  of  tragedy, 
whose  career  began  with  Dryden's  laureateship,  was  John 
Crowne,  "  little  starched  Johnny  Crowne,"  as  Rochester  calls 
him,  but  whom  so  good  a  judge  as  Charles  Lamb  has 
thought  worthy  of  commemoration  as  having  written  some 
really  fine  things.  Finally,  a  few  Nahum  Tates,  Elkanah 
Settles,  Tom  D'Urfeys  and  other  small  celebrities,  in  whose 
company  we  may  place  Aphra  Behn,  the  poetess,  close  the 
list. 

Doing  our  best  to  fancy  this  cluster  of  wits  and  playwriters, 
in  the  midst  of  which,  from  his  appointment  to  the  laureate- 
ship  in  1670,  at  the  age  of  forty,  to  his  deposition  from  that 
office  in  1688,  at  the  age  of  fifty-eight,  Dryden  is  historically 
the  principal  figure,  we  can  very  well  see  that  not  one  of 
them  all  could  wrest  the  dictatorship  from  him.  With  an 
income  from  various  sources,  including  his  salary  as  laureate 
and  historiographer,  and  his  receipts  from  his  engagement 
with  Killigrew's  company,  amounting  in  all  to  about  600/. 
a-year,  which,  according  to  Sir  Walter  Scott's  computation, 
means  about  1,800/.  in  our  value,  he  had,  during  a  portion  of 
this  time  at  least,  all  the  means  of  external  respectability  in 


he 


LITERATURE   OF  THE  RESTORATION.  117 

sufficient  abundance.  His  reputation  as  the  first  dramatic 
author  of  the  day,  was  already  made ;  and  if,  as  yet,  there 
were  others  who  had  done  as  well  or  better  as  poets  out  of  the 
dramatic  walk,  he  more  than  made  up  for  this  by  the  excel- 
lence of  his  prologues  and  epilogues,  and  by  his  readiness  and 
power  as  a  prose-critic  of  general  literature.  No  one  could 
deny  that,  though  a  rather  heavy  man  in  private  society,  and 
so  slow  and  silent  among  the  wits  of  the  coffee-house  that, 
but  for  the  pleasure  of  seeing  his  placid  face,  the  deeply 
indented  leather  chair  on  which  he  sat  would  have  done  as 
well  to  represent  literature  there  as  his  own  presence  in  it, 
John  Dryden  was,  all  in  all,  the  first  wit  of  the  age.  There 
was  not  a  Buckingham,  nor  an  Etherege,  nor  a  Shadwell,  nor 
a  starched  Johnny  Crowne,  of  them  all,  that  singly  would 
have  dared  to  dispute  his  supremacy.  And  yet,  as  will 
happen,  what  his  subjects  would  not  dare  to  do  singly,  or 
ostensibly,  some  of  them  tried  to  compass  by  cabal  and  syste- 
matic depreciation  on  particular  points.  In  fact,  Dryden  had 
to  fight  pretty  hard  to  maintain  his  place,  and  had  to  make  an 
example  or  two  of  a  rebel  subject  before  the  rest  were  terrified 
into  submission. 

He  was  first  attacked  in  the  very  field  of  his  greatest 
triumphs — the  drama.  The  attack  was  partly  directed  against 
himself  personally,  partly  against  that  style  of  the  heroic  or 
rhymed  tragedy,  of  which  he  was  the  advocate  and  repre- 
sentative. There  had  always  been  dissenters  from  this  new 
fashion ;  and  among  these  was  the  Duke  of  Buckingham,  who 
had  a  natural  genius  for  making  fun  of  anything.  Assisted, 
it  is  said,  by  his  chaplain,  Sprat,  and  by  Butler,  who  had 

Iready  satirized  this  style  of  tragedy  by  writing  a  dialogue, 
which  two  cats  are  made  to  caterwaul  to  each  other  in 

eroics,  the  duke  had  amused  his  leisure  by  preparing  a  farce, 
in  which  heroic  plays  were  held  up  to  ridicule.  In  the  original 
draft  of  the  farce,  Davenant  was  made  the  butt  under  the 
name  of  Bilboa ;  but,  after  Davenant' s  death,  the  farce  was 
recast,  and  Dryden  substituted  under  the  name  of  Bayes. 
The  plot  of  this  famous  farce,  the  Rehearsal,  is  much  the 
same  as  that  of  Sheridan's  Critic.     The  poet  Bayes  invites 


118  DRYDEN,   AND   THE 

two  friends,  Smith  and  Johnson,  to  be  present  at  the  rehearsal 
of  a  lieroic  play  which  he  is  on  the  point  of  bringing  out,  and 
the  humour  consists  in  the  supposed  representation  -  of  this 
heroic  play,  while  Bayes  alternately  directs  the  actors,  and 
expounds  the  drift  of  the  play  and  its  beauties  to  Smith  and 
Johnson,  who  all  the  while  are  laughing  at  him,  and  thinking 
it  monstrous  rubbish.  Conceive  a  farce  like  this,  written  with 
amazing  cleverness,  and  full  of  absurdities,  produced  in 
the  very  theatre  where  the  echoes  of  Dryden's  last  sonorous 
heroics  were  still  lingering,  and  acted  by  the  same  actors; 
conceive  it  interspersed  with  parodies  of  well-known  passages 
from  Dryden's  plays,  and  with  allusions  to  characters  in  these 
plays;  conceive  the  actor  who  played  the  part  of  Bayes, 
dressed  to  look  as  like  Dryden  as  possible,  instructed  by  the 
duke  to  mimic  Dryden's  voice,  and  using  phrases  like  "  i'gad," 
and  "  i'fackins,"  which  Dryden  was  in  the  habit  of  using  in 
familiar  conversation ;  and  an  idea  may  be  formed  of  the 
sensation  made  by  the  Rehearsal  in  all  theatrical  circles  on  its 
first  performance  in  the  winter  of  1671.  Its  effect,  though  not 
immediate,  was  decisive.  From  that  time  the  heroic  or 
rhymed  tragedy  was  felt  to  be  doomed.  Dryden,  indeed,  did 
not  at  once  recant  his  opinion  in  favour  of  rhymed  tragedies, 
but  he  yielded  so  far  to  the  sentence  pronounced  against 
them,  as  to  write  only  one  more  of  the  kind. 

Though  thus  driven  out  of  his  favourite  style  of  the  rhymed 
tragedy,  however,  he  was  not  driven  from  the  stage.  Bound 
by  his  agreement  with  the  king's  company  to  furnish  three 
plays  a-year,  he  continued  to  make  dramatic  writing  his  chief 
occupation ;  and  almost  his  sole  productions  during  the  first 
ten  years  of  his  laureateship,  were  ten  plays.  Three  of  these 
were  prose-comedies ;  one,  a  tragi-comedy,  in  blank  verse  and 
prose ;  one,  an  opera  in  rhyme;  ^y^,,  tragedies  in  blank  verse ; 
and  one,  the  rhymed  tragedy  above  referred  to.  It  will  be 
observed  that  this  was  at  the  rate  of  only  one  play  a-year ; 
•whereas,  by  his  engagement,  he  was  to  furnish  three.  The 
fact  was,  however,  that  the  company  were  very  indulgent  to 
him,  and  let  him  have  his  full  share  of  the  receipts,  averaging 
300/.  a-year,  in  return  for  but  a  third  of  the  stipulated  work. 


LITERATURE  OF  THE  RESTORATION.  119 

Notwithstanding  this,  we  find  them  complaining,  in  1679, 
that  Dryden  had  behaved  unhandsomely  to  them  in  carrying 
one  of  his  plays  to  the  other  theatre,  and  so  injuring  their 
interests.  As,  from  that  year,  none  of  Dryden's  plays  were 
produced  at  the  King^s  Theatre,  but  all  at  the  Duke's,  till 
1682,  when  the  two  companies  were  united,  it  is  probable 
that,  in  that  year,  the  bargain  made  with  Killigrew  termi- 
nated. It  deserves  notice,  by  the  way,  that  the  so-called 
"  opera"  was  one  entitled  The  State  of  Innocence,  or  the  Fall 
of  Man,  founded  on  Milton's  Paradise  Lost,  and  brought  out 
in  1674-5,  immediately  after  Milton's  death.  That  this  was 
an  equivocal  compliment  to  Milton's  memory,  Dryden  himself 
lived  to  acknowledge.  He  confessed  to  Dennis,  twenty  years 
afterwards,  that  at  the  time  when  he  wrote  that  opera  *'  he 
knew  not  half  the  extent  of  Milton's  excellence."  A  striking 
proof  of  Dryden's  immense  veneration  for  Milton,  considering 
how  high  his  admiration  of  Milton  had  been  even  while  he 
was  alive! 

Of  these  dramatic  productions  of  Dryden  during  the  first 
ten  years  of  his  laureateship,  some  were  very  carefully  written. 
Thus  Marria^e-a-la-^node,  performed  in  1672,  is  esteemed  one 
of  his  best  comedies ;  and  of  the  rhymed  tragedy,  Aurung-Zebe, 
performed  in  1675,  he  himself  says,  in  the  Prologue — 

"  What  verse  can  do  he  has  performed  in  this, 
Which  he  presumes  the  most  correct  of  his." 

The  tragedy  oi  All  for  Love,  which  followed  Aurung-Zebe,  in 
1678,  and  in  which  he  falls  back  on  blank  verse,  is  pronounced 
by  many  critics  to  be  the  very  best  of  all  his  dramas  ;  and  per- 
haps none  of  his  plays  have  been  more  read  than  the  Spanish 
Friar,  written  in  1680.  Yet  it  may  be  doubted  if  in  any  of 
these  plays  Dryden  achieved  a  degree  of  immediate  success 
equal  to  that  which  had  attended  his  Tyrannic  Love,  and  his 
Conquest  of  Granada,  written  before  his  laureateship.  This  was 
not  owing  so  much  to  the  single  blow  struck  at  his  fame  by 
Buckingham's  Rehearsal,  as  to  the  growth  of  that  general 
spirit  of  criticism  and  disaffection  which  pursues  every  author 


120  DRYDEN,   AND  THE 

after  the  public  liave  become  sufficiently  acquainted  with  his 
style  to  expect  the  good,  and  look  rather  for  the  bad,  in  what 
he  writes.  Thus,  we  find  one  critic  of  the  day,  Martin  Clifford, 
who  was  a  man  of  some  note,  addressing  Dry  den,  a  year  or 
two  after  his  laureateship,  in  this  polite  fashion :  "  You  do 
live  in  as  much  ignorance  and  darkness  as  you  did  in  the 
womb ;  your  writings  are  like  a  Jack-of-all-trades^  shop ;  they 
have  a  variety,  but  nothing  of  value ;  and  if  thou  art  not  the 
dullest  plant-animal  that  ever  the  earth  produced,  all  that  I 
have  conversed  with  are  strangely  mistaken  in  thee."  This 
onslaught  of  Mr.  Clifford's  is  clearly  to  be  regarded  as  only 
that  gentleman's  ;  but  what  young  Rochester  said  and 
thought  about  Dryden  at  this  time  is  more  likely  to  have  been 
what  was  said  and  thought  generally  by  the  critical  part  of 
the  town. 

'*  Well  sir,  'tis  granted  :  I  said  Dryden's  rhymes 
Were  stolen,  unequal — nay,  dull,  many  times.   ' 
What  foolish  patron  is  there  found  of  his, 
So  blindly  partial  to  deny  me  this  ? 
But  that  his  plays,  embroidered  up  and  down 
With  wit  and  learning,  justly  pleased  the  town, 
In  the  same  paper  I  as  freely  own. 
Yet,  having  this  allowed,  the  heavy  mass 
That  stuffs  up  his  loose  volumes,  must  not  pass. 

***** 
But,  to  be  just,  'twill  to  his  praise  be  found, 
His  excellencies  more  than  faults  abound ; 
Nor  dare  I  from  his  sacred  temples  tear 
The  laurel  which  he  best  deserves  to  wear. 

***** 
And  may  I  not  have  leave  impartially 
To  search  and  censux'e  Dryden's  works,  and  try 
If  these  gross  faults  his  choice  pen  doth  commit, 
Proceed  from  want  of  judgment  or  of  wit ; 
Or  if  his  lumpish  fancy  doth  refuse 
Spirit  and  grace  to  his  loose  slattern  muse  ? " 

We  have  no  doubt  this  opinion,  thus  expressed  by  the  scape- 
grace young  earl,  was  very  general.  Dryden's  own  prose  dis- 
quisitions on  the  principles  of  poetry  may  have  helped  to 
diflfuse  many  of  those  notions  of  genuine  poetical  merit  by 
which  he  was  now  tried.  But,  undoubtedly,  what  most  of  all 
tended  to  expose  Dryden's  reputation  to  the  perils  of  criticism 
was  the  increasing  number  of  his  dramatic  competitors,  and 
the  evident  ability  of  some  of  them.     True,  most  of  these 


LITERATURE  OF  THE  RESTORATION.  121 

Jiompetitors  were  Drjden's  personal  friends,  and  some  of  the 
younger  of  them,  as  Lee,  Shadwell,  Crowne,  and  Tate,  were  in 
the  habit  of  coming  to  him  for  prologues  and  epilogues,  with 
which  to  increase  the  attractions  of  their  plays.  On  more  than 
one  occasion,  too,  Dryden  clubbed  with  Lee  or  Shadwell  in 
the  composition  of  a  dramatic  piece.  But,  though  thus  on  a 
friendly  footing  with  most  of  his  contemporary  dramatists, 
and  almost  in  a  fatherly  relation  to  some  of  them,  Dryden' s 
popularity  was  not  the  less  affected  by  their  competition.  In 
the  department  of  prose  comedy,  Etherege,  whose  last  and 
best  comedy,  Sir  Fopling  Flutter^  was  produced  in  1676,  and 
Wycherley,  whose  four  celebrated  comedies  were  all  produced 
between  1672  and  1677,  had  introduced  a  style  compared 
with  which  Dryden' s  best  comic  attempts  were  but  heavy 
horse-play.  Even  the  fat  hulking  Shadwell,  who  dashed  off 
his  comedies  as  fast  as  he  could  write,  had  a  vein  of  coarse 
natural  humour  which  Dryden  wanted.  It  was  in  vain  that 
Dryden  tried  to  keep  his  pre-eminence  against  these  rivals  by 
increased  strength  of  language,  increased  intricacy  of  plot,  and 
an  increased  use  of  those  brutal  obscenities  upon  which  they 
all  relied  so  much  in  their  efforts  to  please.  One  comedy  in 
which  Dryden,  trusting  too  confidently  to  this  last  element  of 
success,  pushed  grossness  to  the  utmost  conceivable  limit,  was 
hissed  off  the  stage.  In  tragedy,  it  is  true,  his  position  was 
more  firm.  But  even  in  this  department,  some  niches  were 
cut  in  the  body  of  his  fame.  His  friend,  Nat.  Lee,  had  pro- 
duced one  or  two  tragedies  in  which  a  tenderness  and  a  wild 
force  of  passion  were  discerned,  to  which  Dryden's  more  mas- 
culine genius  could  not  pretend ;  Crowne  had  also  done  one 
or  two  things  of  a  superior  character ;  and,  though  it  was  not 
till  1682  that  Otway  produced  his  Venice  Preserved,  he  had 
already  given  evidence  of  his  mastery  of  dramatic  pathos.  All 
this  Dryden  might  have  seen  without  allowing  himself  to  be 
much  concerned,  conscious  as  he  must  have  been  that  in 
general  strength  he  was  still  superior  to  all  about  him,  how- 
ever they  might  rival  him  in  particulars.  The  deliberate 
resolution,  however,  of  Eochester  and  some  other  aristocratic 
leaders  of  the  fashion,  to  make  good  their  criticisms  on  his 


122  DRYDEN,   AND  THE 

writings,  by  setting  up  first  one  and  then  another  of  the 
dramatists  of  the  day  as  patterns  of  a  higher  style  of  art  than 
his,  provoked  him  out  of  his  composure.  To  show  what  he 
could  do,  if  called  upon  to  defend  his  rights  against  pretenders, 
he  made  a  terrible  example  of  one  poor  Avretch,  who  had  been 
puffed  for  the  moment  into  undue  popularity.  This  unfortu- 
nate was  Elkanah  Settle,  and  the  occasion  of  the  attack  was 
a  heroic  tragedy  written  by  Settle,  acted  with  great  success 
both  on  the  stage  and  at  Whitehall,  and  published  with  illus- 
trative woodcuts.  On  this  performance  Dryden  made  a  most 
merciless  onslaught  in  a  prose-criticism  prefixed  to  his  next 
published  play,  tearing  Settle's  metaphors  and  grammar  to 
pieces.  Settle  replied  with  some  spirit,  but  little  effect,  and 
was,  in  fact,  settled  for  ever.  Rochester  next  patronized 
Crowne  and  Otway  for  a  time,  but  soon  gave  them  up,  and 
contented  himself  with  assailing  Dryden  more  directly  in  such 
lampoons  as  we  have  quoted.  In  the  year  1679,  however, 
suspecting  Dryden  to  have  had  a  share  in  the  authorship  of  a 
poem,  then  circulating  in  manuscript;  in  which  certain  liberties 
were  taken  with  his  name,  he  caused  him  to  be  way-laid  and 
beaten  as  he  was  going  home  one  evening  through  Rose-alley 
to  his  house  in  Gerard-street.  The  poem,  entitled  An  Essay 
on  Satire,  is  usually  printed  among  Dryden's  works  ;  but  it 
remains  uncertain  whether  Dryden  was  really  the  author. 

It  was  fortunate  for  Dryden  and  for  English  literature  that, 
just  about  this  period,  when  he  was  beginning  to  be  regarded 
as  a  veteran  among  the  dramatists,  whose  farther  services  in 
that  department  the  town  could  afford  to  spare,  circumstances 
led  him,  almost  without  any  wish  of  his  own,  into  a  new  path 
of  literature.  He  was  now  arrived  at  the  ripe  age  of  fifty 
years,  and,  if  an  inventory  had  been  made  of  his  writings, 
they  would  have  been  found  to  consist  of  twenty-one  dramas, 
with  a  series  of  critical  prose-essays  for  the  most  part  bound 
up  with  these  dramas,  and  nothing  in  the  nature  of  non- 
dramatic  poetry,  except  a  few  occasional  pieces,  of  which  the 
Annus  MiraUlis  was  still  the  chief.  Had  a  discerning  critic 
examined  these  works  with  a  view  to  discover  in  what  pecu- 
liar vein  of  verse,  Dryden,  if  he  abandoned  the  drama,  might 


LITERATURE   OP   THE   RESTORATION.  123 

still  do  justice  to  his  powers,  he  would  certainly  have  selected 
the  vein  of  reflective  satire.  Of  the  most  nervous  and  em- 
phatic lines  that  could  have  been  quoted  from  his  plays  a 
large  proportion  would  have  been  found  to  consist  of  what 
may  be  called  maxim  metrically  expressed ;  while,  in  his 
dramatic  prologues  and  epilogues,  which  were  always  thought 
among  the  happiest  efforts  of  his  pen,  the  excellence  would 
have  been  found  to  consist  in  very  much  the  same  power  of 
direct  didactic  declamation  applied  satirically  to  the  humours, 
manners,  and  opinions  of  the  day.  Whether  any  critic, 
observing  all  this,  would  have  been  bold  enough  to  advise 
Dryden  to  take  the  hint,  and  quit  the  drama  for  satirical, 
controversial,  and  didactic  poetry,  we  need  not  inquire.  Cir- 
cumstances compelled  what  advice  might  have  failed  to  bring 
about.  After  some  twenty  years  of  political  stagnation,  or 
rather  of  political  confusion,  relieved  only  by  the  occasional 
cabals  of  leading  statesmen,  and  by  rumours  of  Catholic  and 
Protestant  plots,  the  old  Puritan  feeling  and  the  general  spirit 
of  civil  liberty,  which  the  Kestoration  had  but  pent  up  within 
the  vitals  of  England,  broke  forth  in  a  regular  and  organized 
form  as  modem  English  Whiggism.  The  controversy  had 
many  ramifications,  but  its  immediate  phase  at  that  moment 
was  an  antagonism  of  two  parties  on  the  question  of  the 
succession  to  the  crown  after  Charles  should  die — the  Tories 
and  Catholics  maintaining  the  rights  of  the  Duke  of  York  as 
the  legal  heir ;  and  the  Whigs  and  Protestants  rallying,  for 
want  of  a  better  man,  round  Charles's  illegitimate  son,  the 
handsome  and  popular  Duke  of  Monmouth,  then  a  puppet  in 
the  hands  of  Shaftesbury,  the  recognised  leader  of  the  opposi- 
tion. Charles  himself  was  forced  by  reasons  of  state  to  take 
part  with  his  brother,  and  to  frown  on  Monmouth ;  but  this 
did  not  prevent  the  lords  and  wits  of  the  time  from  dis- 
tributing themselves  pretty  equally  between  the  two  parties, 
and  fighting  out  the  dispute  with  all  the  weapons  of  intrigue 
and  ridicule.  Shadwell,  Settle,  and  some  other  minor  poets, 
lent  their  pens  to  the  Whigs,  and  wrote  squibs  and  satires  in 
the  Whig  service.  Lee,  Otway,  Tate,  and  others,  worked  for 
the  Court  party.     Dryden,  as  laureate  and  Tory,  had  but  one 


124  DRYDEN,   AND  THE 

course  to  take.  He  plunged  into  the  controversy  with  the 
whole  force  of  his  genius  ;  and  in  November,  1681,  when  the 
nation  was  waiting  for  the  trial  of  Shaftesbury,  then  a  pri- 
soner in  the  Tower,  he  published  his  satire  of  Absalom  and 
AcMtophel,  in  which,  under  the  thin  veil  of  a  story  of 
Absalom's  rebellion  against  his  father  David,  the  existing 
political  state  of  England  was  represented  from  the  Tory 
point  of  view.  Among  the  characters  portrayed  in  it,  Dryden 
had  the  satisfaction  of  introducing  his  old  critic,  the  Duke  of 
Buckingham,  upon  whom  he  now  took  ample  revenge. 

The  satire  of  Ahsaloin  and  AcMtophely  than  which  nothing 
finer  of  the  kind  had  ever  appeared  in  England,  and  which 
indeed  surpassed  all  that  could  have  been  expected  even  from 
Dryden  at  that  time,  was  the  first  of  a  series  of  polemical  or 
satirical  poems  the  composition  of  which  occupied  the  last 
eight  years  of  his  laureateship.  The  Medal^  a  Satire  against 
Sedition,  appeared  in  March,  1682,  as  the  poet's  comment  on 
the  popular  enthusiasm  occasioned  by  the  acquittal  of  Shaftes- 
bury ;  Mac  Flecknoe,  in  which  Shadwell,  as  poet-in-chief  of 
the  Whigs,  received  a  thrashing  all  to  himself,  was  published 
in  October  in  the  same  year ;  and,  a  month  later,  there 
appeared  the  so-called  Second  Fart  of  Absalom  and  Achito])hel, 
written  by  Nahum  Tate,  under  Dryden's  superintendence,  and 
with  interpolations  from  Dryden's  pen.  In  the  same  avowed 
character,  as  literary  champion  of  the  government  and  the 
party  of  the  Duke  of  York,  Dryden  continued  to  labour 
during  the  remainder  of  the  reign  of  Charles.  His  Religio 
Laid,  indeed,  produced  early  in  1683,  and  forming  a  metrical 
statement  of  the  grounds  and  extent  of  his  own  attachment 
to  the  Church  of  England,  can  hardly  have  been  destined  for 
immediate  political  service.  But  the  solitary  play  which  he 
wrote  about  this  period — a  tragedy  called  The  Duhe  of  Guise 
— was  certainly  intended  for  political  eficct ;  as  was  also  a 
translation  from  the  French  of  a  work  on  the  history  of 
French  Calvinism. 

How  ill  requited  Dryden  was  for  these  services  appears 
but  too  clearly  firom  evidence  proving  that,  at  this  time,  he 
was  in  great  pecuniary  difficulties.     At  the  time  when  the 


LITERATURE   OF  THE   RESTORATION.  125 

king's  cast-ofF  mistresses  were  receiving  pensions  of  10,000Z. 
a-year,  and  when  130,000?.,  or  more,  was  squandered  every 
year  on  secret  court-purposes,  Dryden's  salary  as  laureate 
remained  unpaid  for  four  years ;  and  when,  in  consequence  of 
his  repeated  solicitations,  an  order  for  part-payment  of  the 
arrears  was  at  last  issued  in  May,  1684,  it  was  for  the  miserable 
pittance  of  one  quarter's  salary,  due  at  midsummer,  1680, 
leaving  fifteen  quarters,  or  750/.  still  in  arrears.  It  appears, 
however,  from  a  document  published  for  the  first  time  by  Mr. 
Bell,  that  an  additional  pension  of  100?.  a-year  was  at  this 
time  conferred  on  Dryden — that  pension  to  date  retrospectively 
from  1680,  and  the  arrears  to  be  paid,  as  convenient,  along 
with  the  larger  arrears  of  salary.  How  far  Dryden  benefited 
by  this  nominal  increase  of  his  emoluments  from  government, 
or  whether  any  further  portion  of  the  arrears  was  paid  up, 
while  Charles  continued  on  the  throne,  can  hardly  be  ascer- 
tained. Charles  died  in  February,  1684-5,  and  Dryden,  as  in 
duty  bound,  wrote  his  funeral  panegyric.  In  this  Pindaric, 
which  is  entitled  Threnodia  Augustalis,  the  poet  seems  to  hint, 
as  delicately  as  the  occasion  would  permit,  at  the  limited 
extent  of  his  pecuniary  obligations  to  the  deceased  monarch. 

"  As,  when  the  new-born  phoenix  takes  his  way, 
His  rich  paternal  regions  to  survey, 
Of  airy  choristers  a  numerous  train 
Attends  his  wondrous  progress  o'er  the  plain ; 
So,  rising  from  his  fathers  urn, 
So  glorious  did  our  Charles  return. 
The  officious  muses  came  along — 
A  gay  harmonious  choir,  like  angels  ever  young ; 
The  muse,  that  mourns  him  now,  his  happy  triumph  sung. 

Even  they  coiild  thrive  in  his  auspicious  reign ; 
And  such  a  plenteous  crop  they  bore 

Of  purest  and  well-winnowed  grain, 
As  Britain  never  knew  before ; 

Though  little  was  their  hire,  and  light  their  gain. 
Yet  somewhat  to  their  share  he  threw. 
Fed  from  his  hand,  they  sung  and  flew, 
Like  birds  of  Paradise,  that  lived  on  morning  dew. 
Oh,  never  let  their  lays  his  name  forget ! 
The  pension  of  a  prince's  praise  is  great." 

If  there  was  any  literary  man  in  whose  favour  James  II.  on 
his  accession,  might  have  been  expected  to  relax  his  parsi- 
monious habits,  it  was  Dryden.  The  poet  had  praised  him 
and  made  a  hero  of  Idm  for  twenty  years,  and  had,  during 


126  DETDEN,   AND  THE 

the  last  four  years,  been  working  for  him  incessantly.     In 
acknowledgment  of  these  services,  James  could  not  do  other- 
wise than  continue  him  in  the  laureateship ;  but  this  was  all 
that  he  seemed  inclined  to  do.     In  the  new  patent  issued  for 
the  purpose,  not  only  was  there  no  renewal  of  the  deceased 
king's  private  gTant  of  lOOZ.  a-year,  but  even  the  annual  butt 
of  sherry,  hitherto  forming  part  of  the  laureate's  allowance, 
was  discontinued,  and  the  salary  limited  to  the  precise  money 
payment  of  2001.  a-year.     If,  as  is  probable,  the  salary  was 
now  more  punctually  paid  than  it  had  been  under  Charles, 
the  reduction  may  have  been  of  less  consequence.     In  March, 
1685-6,  however,  James   opened  his   purse,  and,   by   fresh 
letters  patent,  conferred  on  Dryden  a  permanent  additional 
salary  of  1001.  a-year,  thus  raising  the"  annual  income  of  the 
laureateship  to  300 Z.     The  explanation  of  this  unusual  piece 
of  liberality  on  the  part  of  James,  has  been  generally  supposed 
to  lie  in  the  fact  that,  in  the  course  of  the  preceding  year, 
Dryden  had  proved  the  thorough  and  unstinted  character  of 
his  loyalty,  by  declaring  himself  a  convert  to   the   king's 
religion.     That  Dryden's  passing  over  to  the  Catholic  church 
was  contemporaneous  with  the  increase  of  his  pension,  is  a 
fact ;  but  what  may  have  been  the  exact  relation  between  the 
two  events  is  a  question  which  one  ought  to  be  cautious  in 
answering.    Mr.  Macaulay's  view  of  the  case  is  harsh  enough. 
*'  Finding,"  he  says,  ''  that  if  he  continued  to  call  himself 
a  Protestant,  his  services  would  be  overlooked,  he  declared 
himself  a  Papist.     The  king's  parsimony  instantly  relaxed. 
Dryden  was  gratified  with  a  pension  of  one  hundred  pounds 
a-year,  and  was  employed  to  defend  his  new  religion  both  in 
prose  and  verse.^'    Sir  Walter  Scott's  view  is  more  charitable, 
and,  we  believe,  more  just.     He  regards  Dryden's  conversion 
as  having  been,  in  the  main,  honest  to  the  extent  professed 
by  himself,  though  his  situation  and  expectations  may  have 
cooperated  to  effect  it.     In  support  of  this  view  Mr.  Bell 
points  out  the  fact  that  the  pension  granted  by  James,  was, 
after  all,  only  a  renewal  of  a  pension  granted  by  Charles,  and 
which,  not  being  secured  by  letters  patent,  had  lapsed  on  that 
king's  decease.     Dryden,  it  is  also  to  be  remarked,  remained 


LITERATURE    OF  THE    RESTORATION.  127 

sufficiently  staunch  to  his  new  faith  during  the  rest  of  his  life, 
and  seems  even  to  have  felt  a  kind  of  comfort  in  it.  Probably, 
therefore,  the  true  state  of  the  case  is,  that  conformity  to  the 
Catholic  religion,  at  the  time  when  Dryden  embraced  it,  was 
the  least  troublesome  mode  of  systematizing  for  his  own  mind 
a  number  of  diverse  speculations,  personal  and  political,  that 
were  then  perplexing  him;  and  that,  afterwards,  in  conse- 
quence of  the  very  obloquy  which  his  change  of  religion  drew 
upon  him  from  all  quarters,  he  hugged  his  new  creed  more 
closely,  so  as  to  coil  round  him,  for  the  first  time  in  his  life, 
a  few  threads  of  private  theological  conviction.  This  is  not 
very  different  from  the  notion  entertained  by  Sir  Walter 
Scott,  who  argues  that  Dryden's  conversion  was  not,  except 
in  outward  profession, 'a  change  from  Protestant  to  Catholic 
belief,  but  rather  like  that  of  Gibbon,  a  choice  of  Catholicism 
as  the  most  convenient  resting-place  for  a  mind  tired  of 
Pyrrhonism,  and  disposed  to  cut  short  the  process  of  emanci- 
pation from  it  by  taking  a  decisive  step  at  once. 

At  all  events,  Dryden  showed  sufficient  polemical  energy 
in  the  service  of  the  religion  which  he  had  adopted.  He 
became  James's  literary  factotum,  the  defender  in  prose  and 
in  verse  of  the  worst  measures  of  his  rule ;  and  was  ready  to 
do  battle  with  Stillingfleet,  Burnet,  or  any  one  else  that  dared 
to  use  a  pen  on  the  other  side.  As  if  to  make  the  highest 
display  of  his  powers  as  a  versifier  at  a  time  when  his 
character  as  a  man  was  lowest,  he  published,  in  1687,  his 
controversial  allegory  of  The  Hind  and  the  Panther ^  by  far 
the  largest  and  most  elaborate  of  all  his  original  poems.  In 
this  poem,  in  which  the  various  churches  and  sects  of  the  day 
figure  as  beasts — the  Church  of  Eome  as  a  "  milk-white 
hind,^'  innocent  and  unchanged ;  the  Church  of  England  as 
a  "  panther,^^  spotted,  but  still  beautiful ;  Presbyterianism  as 
a  haggard  ugly  "  wolf;''  Independency  as  the  "  bloody  bear ;" 
the  Baptists  as  the  "bristled  boar;''  the  Unitarians  as  the 
"  false  fox ;"  the  Freethinkers  as  the  "  buffoon  ape  ; "  and  the 
Quakers  as  the  timid  "  hare  " — Dryden  showed  that,  whatever 
his  new  faith  had  done  for  him,  it  had  not  changed  his  genius 
for  satire.     In  fact,  precisely  as  daring  the  reign  of  Janres, 


128 

Dryden  appears  personally  as  a  solitary  giant,  warring  on  the 
wrong  side,  so  this  poem  remains  as  the  sole  literary  work  of 
any  excellence  in  which  the  wretched  spirit  of  that  reign  is 
fully  represented.  Dryden  himself,  as  if  he  had  thrown  all 
his  force  into  it,  wrote  little  else  in  verse  till  the  year  1688, 
when,  on  the  occasion  of  the  birth  of  James's  son,  afterwards 
the  Pretender,  he  made  himself  the  spokesman  of  the  exulting 
Catholics,  and  published  his  Britannia  Rediviva, 

"  See  how  the  venerable  infant  lies 
In  early  pomp ;  how  through  the  mother's  eyes 
The  father's  soul,  with  an  undaunted  view, 
Looks  out,  and  takes  our  homage  as  his  due. 
See  on  his  future  subjects  how  he  smiles, 
Nor  meanly  flatters,  nor  with  craft  beguiles ; 
But  with  an  open  face,  as  on  his  throne. 
Assures  our  birthrights,  and  secures  his  own." 

Within  a  few  months  after  these  lines  were  written,  the 
father,  the  mother,  and  the  baby  were  turned  out  of  England ; 
Dutch  William  was  king ;  and  the  Whigs  had  it  all  to  them- 
selves. Dryden,  as  a  matter  of  course,  had  to  give  up  the 
laureateship ;  and,  as  William  had  but  a  small  choice  of  poets, 
Shadwell  was  the  person  put  in  his  place. 

The  concluding  period  of  Dryden's  career,  extending  from 
the  Revolution  to  his  death  in  1700,  exhibits  him  as  a  Tory 
patriarch  lingering  in  the  midst  of  a  Whig  generation,  and 
still,  despite  the  change  of  dynasty,  retaining  his  literary  pre- 
eminence. For  a  while,  of  course,  he  was  under  a  cloud ;  but 
after  it  had  passed  away,  he  was  at  liberty  to  make  his  own 
terms  with  the  public.  The  country,  indeed,  could  have  no 
literature  except  what  he  and  such  as  he  chose  to  furnish. 
Locke,  Sir  William  Temple,  and  others  were  now  in  a  posi- 
tion to  bring  forward  speculations  smothered  during  the  pre- 
vious reigns,  and  to  scatter  seeds  that  might  spring  up  in  new 
literary  forms.  Burnet,  Tillotson,  and  others  might  represent 
Whiggism  in  the  church.  But  all  the  literary  men,  especially 
such,  whose  services  were  available  at  the  beginning  of  the 
new  reign,  were  men  who,  whatever  might  be  their  volun- 
tary relations  to  the  new  order  of  things,  had  been  more  or 
less  trained  in  the  school  of  the  Restoration,  and  accustomed 
to  the  supremacy  of  Dryden.     The  Earl  of  Rochester,  the 


LITERATURE   OF  THE   RESTORATION.  129 

Earl  of  Roscommon,  the  Duke  of  Buckingham,  Etherege,  the 
dramatist,  and  poor  Otwaj,  were  dead ;  but  Shadwell,  Settle, 
Lee,  Crowne,  Tate,  Wycherley,  the  Earl  of  Dorset,  Tom 
D'Urfey,  and  Sir  Charles  Sedlej,  were  still  alive.  Shadwell, 
coarse  and  fat  as  ever,  enjoyed  the  laureateship  till  his  death, 
in  1692,  when  Nahum  Tate  was  appointed  to  succeed  him. 
Settle  had  degenerated  into  the  City  sliowman.  Lee,  liberated 
from  Bedlam,  continued  to  wi'ite  tragedies  till  April,  1692, 
when  he  tumbled  over  a  bulk  going  home  drunk  at  night 
through  Clare  Market,  and  was  killed  or  stifled  among  the 
snow.  Little  starched  Johnny  Crowne  kept  up  the  respect- 
ability of  his  character.  Wycherley  lived  as  a,infinr  of  fashion 
about  town,  and  wi'ote  no  more.  Sedley  and  the  Earl  of 
Dorset  were  also  idle ;  and  Tom  D'Urfey  made  small  witti- 
cisms, and  called  them  "  pills  to  purge  melancholy.^'  Among 
such  men  Dry  den,  so  long  as  he  cared  to  be  seen  among 
them,  held  necessarily  his  old  place.  Nor  were  there  any  of 
the  younger  men,  as  yet  known,  in  whom  the  critics  recognised, 
or  who  recognised  in  themselves,  any  title  to  renounce  allegi- 
ance to  the  ex-laureate.  Thomas  Southerne  had  begun  his 
prolific  career  as  a  dramatist  in  1682,  when  Dryden  furnished 
him  with  a  prologue  to  his  first  play ;  but,  though  after  the 
Revolution  he  made  more  money  by  his  dramas  than  ever 
Dryden  had  made  by  his,  he  was  ashamed  to  admit  the  fact 
to  Pry  den  himself.  Matthew  Prior,  twenty -four  years  of  age 
at  the  Revolution,  had  made  his  first  literary  appearance 
before  it,  in  no  less  important  a  character  than  that  of  one  of 
Dryden's  political  antagonists;  but  though  The  Town  and 
Country  Mouse  had  been  a  decided  hit,  and  Dryden  himself 
was  said  to  have  winced  under  it,  no  one  pretended  that  the 
author  was  anything  more  than  a  clever  young  man,  who  had 
sat  in  Dryden's  company,  and  turned  his  opportunities  to 
account.  Five  years  after  the  Revolution,  Congreve  produced 
his  first  comedy  at  the  age  of  twenty-four ;  but  it  was  Con- 
greve's  greatest  boast  in  after  life,  that  that  comedy  had  won 
him  the  warm  praises  of  Dryden,  and  laid  the  foundation  of 
the  extraordinary  friendship  which  had  subsisted  between 
them  during  Dryden's  last  years,  when  they  used  to  walk 

K 


130  DRYDEN,   AND  THE 

together  and  dine  together  as  father  and  son.  During  these 
last  years  Drjden,  had  he  been  willing  to  see  merit  in  any- 
other  comedies  than  those  of  his  young  friend  Congreve, 
might  have  hailed  his  equal  in  Vanbrugh,  and  his  superior  in 
Farquhar,  then  beginning  to  write  for  the  stage.  Among 
their  coevals,  destined  to  some  distinction,  he  might  have 
marked  CoUey  Gibber,  Nicholas  Rowe,  and  John  Philips, 
the  pleasing  parodist  of  Milton.  Of  the  epics  of  Blackmore 
he  had  quite  enough ;  at  least  three  of  those  immense  perform- 
ances having  been  given  to  the  world  before  Dryden  died. 
At  the  time  of  Dryden' s  death,  his  kinsman,  Jonathan  Swift, 
was  thirty-three  years  of  age;  Richard  Steele  was  thirty; 
Daniel  Defoe  was  thirty ;  Addison  was  twenty-nine ;  Shaftes- 
bury, the  essayist,  was  twenty-nine ;  Bolingbroke  was  twenty- 
two;  and  Parnell  the  poet,  twenty-one.  With  these  men 
a  new  literary  movement  was  to  take  its  origin ;  but  they  had 
hardly  yet  begun  their  work ;  and  there  was  not  one  of  them, 
Swift  excepted,  that  would  not,  in  the  height  of  his  subsequent 
fame,  have  been  proud  to  acknowledge  his  obligations  to 
Dryden.  Alexander  Pope,  the  next  Englishman  that  was  to 
take  a  place  in  general  literature  as  high,  or  nearly  as  high  as 
that  occupied  by  Dryden,  had  been  born  only  in  the  year  o 
the  Revolution,  and  was  consequently  but  a  precocious  boy  of 
twelve  when  Dryden  left  the  scene.  VirgiUum  tantum  viditj 
as  he  used  himself  to  say. 

Living,  a  hale  patriarch,  among  these  newer  men,  Dryden 
partly  influenced  them,  and  was  partly  influenced  by  them. 
(.)n  the  one  hand,  it  was  from  his  chair  in  WilPs  Coflee-house 
that  those  literary  decrees  were  issued  which  still  ruled  the 
judgment  of  the  town ;  and  for  a  young  author,  on  visiting 
Will's,  to  receive  a  pinch  from  Dryden' s  snuff'-box,  was  equi- 
valent to  his  formal  admission  into  that  society  of  wits.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  times  were  so  changed  and  the  men  were 
so  changed,  that  Dryden,  dictator  as  he  w^as,  had  to  yield  in 
some  points,  and  defend  himself  in  others.  His  cousin  Swift, 
whom  he  had  offended  by  an  unfavourable  judgment  given  in 
private  on  some  of  his  poems,  was  the  only  man  who  would 
have  made  a  wholesale  attack  upon  his  literary  reputation ; 


LITERATURE   OF  THE   RESTORATION.  131 

but  the  moral  character  of  his  writings  was  a  subject  on  which 
adverse  criticism  was  likely  to  be  more  general.  At  first, 
indeed,  there  was  little  perceptible  improvement  in  the  moral 
tone  of  the  literature  of  the  Revolution,  as  compared  with  that 
of  the  Restoration — the  elder  dramatists,  such  as  Shadwell, 
still  writing  in  the  fashion  to  which  they  had  been  accustomed ; 
and  the  younger  ones,  such  as  Congreve  and  Yanbrugh, 
deeming  it  a  point  of  honour  to  be  as  immoral  as  their  prede- 
cessors. In  the  course  of  a  few  years,  however,  what  with  the 
influence  of  a  Whig  court,  what  with  other  causes,  a  purer 
and  more  delicate  taste  crept  in ;  and  people  became  ashamed 
of  what  their  fathers  had  delighted  in.  Dry  den  lived  to  see 
the  beginnings  of  this  important  change,  and,  with  many 
expressions  of  regret  for  his  own  past  delinquencies  in  this 
respect,  to  welcome  the  appearance  of  a  chaster  literature. 

Those  of  Dryden's  writings,  which  were  produced  during 
the  twelve  years  of  his  life  subsequent  to  the  Revolution,  con- 
stitute an  important  part  of  his  literary  remains,  not  merely  in 
point  of  bulk,  but  also  in  respect  of  a  certain  general  peculi- 
arity of  their  character.  They  may  be  described  as  for  the 
most  part  belonging  to  the  department  of  pure,  as  distinct 
from  that  of  controversial,  literature.  Dryden  did  not  indeed 
wholly  abandon  satire  and  controversy  after  the  Revolution ; 
but  his  aim  after  that  period  seemed  rather  to  be  to  produce 
such  literature  as  would  at  once  be  acceptable  to  the  public, 
and  earn  for  himself  the  most  money  with  the  least  trouble. 
Deprived  of  his  laureateship,  and  so  rendered  almost  entirely 
dependent  on  his  pen,  at  a  time  when  age  was  creeping  upon 
him,  and  the  expenses  of  his  family  were  greater  than  ever, 
he  was  obliged  to  make  considerations  of  economy  paramount 
in  his  choice  of  work.  As  was  natural,  he  fell  back  at  first 
on  the  drama ;  and  his  five  last  plays,  two  of  which  are  trage- 
dies, one  an  opera,  and  two  comedies,  were  all  produced 
between  1689  and  1694.  The  profits  of  these  dramas,  how- 
ever, were  insufficient,  and  he  was  obliged  to  eke  them  out  by 
all  those  devices  of  dedication  to  private  noblemen,  execution 
of  literary  commissions  for  elegiac  poems  and  the  like,  which 
then  formed  part  of  the  professional  author's  means  of  liveli- 

k2 


132  ."  DRYDEN,   AND   THE 

hood.  Sums  of  50?.,  lOOZ.,  and  even,  in  one  or  two  cases, 
500/.,  were  earned  by  Drjden  in  this  disagreeable  way  from 
earls,  squires,  and  clubs  of  gentlemen.  His  poem  of  Eleonora 
was  a  500?.  commission,  executed  for  the  Earl  of  Abingdon, 
who  wanted  a  poem  in  memory  of  his  deceased  wife,  and, 
without  knowing  anything  of  Dryden  personally,  applied  to 
him  to  write  it ;  just  as  now,  in  a  similar  case,  a  commission 
might  be  given  to  a  popular  sculptor  for  a  ^ost  mortem  statue. 
In  spite  of  the  utmost  allowance  for  the  custom  of  the  time, 
no  one,  knowing  the  circumstances,  can  read  the  poem  now 
without  absolute  disgust ;  and,  unwilling  as  we  are  to  think 
so,  it  does  show  a  certain  lowness  of  mind  in  Dryden  to  have 
been  able,  under  any  pressure  of  necessity,  to  write  for  hire 
such  extravagances  as  that  poem  contains  respecting  a  person 
he  had  never  seen.  Far  more  honourable  were  Dryden's 
earnings  from  work  done  for  Jacob  Tonson,  the  publisher. 
His  dealings  with  Tonson  had  begun  before  the  Revolution ; 
but,  after  the  Eevolution,  Tonson  was  his  mainstay.  First 
came  several  volumes  of  miscellanies,  consisting  of  select 
poems,  published  and  unpublished,  with  scraps  of  prose  and 
translation.  Then,  catching  at  the  hint  furnished  by  the 
success  of  some  of  the  scraps  of  translation  from  the  Latin 
and  Greek  poets,  Dryden  and  Tonson  found  it  mutually 
advantageous  to  prosecute  that  vein.  Juvenal  and  Persius 
were  translated  under  Dryden's  care ;  and  in  1697,  after  three 
years  of  labour,  he  gave  to  the  world  his  completed  translation 
of  Virgil.  Looking  about  for  a  task  to  succeed  this,  he  under- 
took to  furnish  Tonson  with  so  many  thousand  lines  of  narra- 
tive verse,  to  be  published  under  the  title  of  Fables,  Where 
the  fables  came  from  Tonson  did  not  care,  provided  they 
would  sell ;  and  Dryden,  with  his  rapid  powers  of  versifica- 
tion, soon  produced  versions  of  some  tales  of  Chaucer  and 
Boccaccio  which  answered  the  purpose  exceedingly  well. 
•They  were  printed  in  1699.  Of  the  other  poems  written  by 
Dryden  in  his  last  years,  his  Alexander  s  Feast  is  the  roost 
celebrated.  He  continued  his  literary  labours  till  within 
a  few  days  of  his  death,  which  happened  on  the  1st  of  May, 
1700. 


LITERATURE   OF  THE   RESTORATION.  133. 

When  we  inquire  what  it  is  that  makes  Dryden's  name  so 
important  as  to  entitle  it  to  rank,  as  it  seems  to  do,  the  fifth 
in  the  series  of  great  English  poets  after  Chaucer,  Spenser, 
Shakespeare,  and  Milton,  we  find  that  it  is  nothing  else  than 
the  fact,  brought  out  in  the  preceding  sketch,  that,  steadily  and 
industriously,  for  a  period  of  forty-two  years,  he  kept  in  the 
front  of  the  national  literature,  such  as  it  then  was.  It  is 
because  he  represents  the  entire  literary  development  of  the 
Eestoration  ;  it  is  because  he  fills  up,  as  it  were,  the  whole 
interval  between  1658  and  1700 — thus  connecting  the  age  of 
Puritanism  and  Milton,  with  the  age  of  the  Queen  Anne  wits 
— that  we  give  him  such  a  place  in  such  a  list.  The  reason  is 
a  chronological  one,  rather  than  one  of  strict  comparison  of 
personal  merits.  Though  we  place  Dryden  fifth  in  the  list 
after  Chaucer,  Spenser,  Shakespeare,  and  Milton,  it  is  not 
necessarily  because  we  regard  him  as  the  co-equal  of  those 
men  in  genius ;  it  is  only  because,  passing  onward  in  time, 
his  is  the  next  name  of  very  distinguished  magnitude  after 
theirs.  Personally  there  is  no  one  that  would  compare 
Dryden  with  Shakespeare  or  Milton ;  and  perhaps  there  are 
not  many  now  that  would  compare  him  with  Chaucer  or 
Spenser.  On  the  whole,  if  the  estimate  be  one  of  general 
intellectual  strength,  he  takes  rank  only  with  the  first  of  the 
second  class,  as  with  the  Jonsons,  the  Fletchers,  and  others 
of  the  Elizabethan  age ;  while  if  the  estimate  have  regard 
to  genuine  poetic  or  imaginative  power,  he  sinks  below 
even  these.  Yet,  if  historical  reasons  only^'  are  regarded, 
Dryden  has  perhaps  a  better  right  to  his  place  in  the  list  than 
any  of  the  others.  At  least  as  strictly  as  Chaucer  is  the 
representative  of  the  English  literature  of  the  latter  half  of 
the  fourteenth  century,  far  more  strictly  than  Spenser  and 
Shakespeare  are  the  representatives  of  the  literature  of  their 
times,  and  in  a  more  broad  and  obvious  manner  than  Milton 
is  the  literary  representative  of  the  Commonwealth,  Dryden 
represents  the  literary  activity  of  the  reigns  of  Charles  and 
James,  and  of  the  greater  part  of  that  of  King  William. 
Davenant,  Butler,  Waller,  Etherege,  Otway,  Wycherley, 
Southerne,  Prior,  and  Congreve,  are  names  leading  us  piece- 


134  DRYDEN,   AND   THE 

meal,  as  it  were,  over  tlie  same  period,  and  illustrating  perliaps 
more  exquisitely  than  Dryden  some  of  its  individual  charac- 
teristics ;  but  for  a  solid  representative  of  the  period  as  a 
whole,  resuming  in  himself  all  its  more  prominent  character- 
istics in  one  substantial  aggregate,  we  are  obliged  to  take 
Dryden.  Twelve  years  of  his  literary  life  he  laboured  as  a 
strong  junior  among  the  Davenants,  the  Butlers,  and  the 
Wallers,  qualifying  himself  to  set  them  aside ;  eighteen  years 
more  were  spent  in  acknowledged  lordship  over  the  Ethereges, 
Otways,  and  Wycherleys,  who  occupied  the  middle  of  the 
period;  and  during  the  twelve  concluding  years,  he  was  a 
patriarch  among  the  Southernes,  and  Priors,  and  Congreves, 
in  whose  lives  the  period  wove  itself  into  the  next. 

And  yet,  personally,  as  well  as  historically,  Dryden  is  a 
man   of  no   mean   importance.     Not  only  is  he  the  largest 
figu  rein  one  epoch  of  our  literature  ;  he  is  a  very  considerable 
figure  also  in  our  literature  as  a  whole.     To  begin  with  the 
most  obvious,  but  at  the  same  time  not  the  least  noteworthy 
of  his  claims,  the  quantity  of  his  contributions  to  our  lite- 
rature was  large.     He  was  a  various  and  voluminous  writer. 
In  Scott's  collected  edition  of  his  works,  they  fill  seventeen 
octavo  volumes.     About  seven  of  these  volumes  consist  of 
dramas,  with  accompanying   prefaces   and   dedications,   the 
number  of  dramas  being  in  all  twenty-eight.     Two  volumes 
more  embrace  the  polemical  poems,  the  satires,  and  the  poems 
of  contemporary  historical  allusion,  written  chiefly  between 
1681  and  1683.     One  volume  is  filled  with  odes,  songs,  and 
lyrical  pieces,  written  at  various  times.     The  fables,  or  metri- 
cal tales,  redacted  in  his  old  age  from  Chaucer  and  Boccaccio, 
occupy  a  volume  and  a  half.     Three  volumes  and  a  half  are 
devoted  to  the  translations  from  the  classic  poets,  including 
Virgil.     The  remaining  two  volumes  consist  of  miscellaneous 
prologues,  epilogues,  and  witty  pieces  of  verse,  and  of  miscel- 
laneous prose-writings,  original  and  translated,  including  the 
critical  essay  on  dramatic  poetry.    Considered  as  a  whole,  the 
matter  of  the  seventeen  volumes  is  a  goodly  contribution  from 
one  man  as  respects  both  extent  and  variety.     Spread  over 
forty-two  years,   it  does  not  argue  that  excessive  industry 

\ 


r 


LITERATURE   OF   THE   RESTORATION.  135 


which  Scott,  of  all  men  in  the  world,  has  found  in  it ;  but  it 
fairly  entitles  Dryden  to  take  his  place  among  those  writers 
who  deserve  regard  for  the  quantity  of  their  writings,  in 
addition  to  whatever  regard  they  may  be  entitled  to  on  the 
score  of  quality.  And  it  is  a  fact  worth  noting,  that  most 
writers  who  have  taken  a  high  place  in  literature  have  been 
voluminous — have  not  only  written  well,  but  have  written 
much.  There  are  two  ways,  also,  of  writing  much.  One 
may  write  much  variously,  or  one  may  write  much  all  of  one 
kind.     Dryden  was  various  as  well  as  voluminous. 

Of  all  that  Dryden  wrote,  however,  there  is  but  a  com- 
paratively small  portion  that  has  won  for  itself  a  permanent 
place  in  our  literature;  and  in  this  Dryden  differs  from 
other  writers  who  have  been  equally  voluminous.  In  other 
words,  it  is  a  significant  circumstance  about  Dryden  that  the 
proportion  of  that  part  of  his  matter  which  survives,  or 
deserves  to  survive,  to  that  part  which  was  squandered  away 
on  the  age  it  was  first  written  for,  and  there  ended,  is  un- 
usually small.  In  Shakespeare,  there  is  very  little  tliat  is  felt 
to  be  of  such  inferior  quality  as  not  to  be  worth  reading  in 
due  time  and  place.  In  Milton,  there  is,  if  we  consider  only 
his  poetry,  still  less.  All  Chaucer,  almost,  is  felt  to  be  worth 
preservation  by  those  who  like  Chaucer ;  all  Wordsworth, 
almost,  by  those  who  like  Wordsworth.  But,  except  for 
library  purposes,  there  is  no  admirer  of  Dryden  that  would 
care  to  save  more  than  a  small  select  portion  of  what  he 
wrote.  His  satires  and  polemical  poems  ;  one  or  two  of  his 
odes ;  his  translation  of  Virgil ;  his  fables ;  one  of  his 
comedies,  and  one  of  his  tragedies,  by  way  of  specimen  of  his 
dramatic  powers  ;  a  complete  set  of  his  prologues,  for  the  sake 
of  their  allusions  to  contemporary  manners  and  humours ; 
and  a  few  pieces  of  his  prose,  to  show  his  style  of  criticism — 
these  would  together  form  a  collection  not  much  more  than  a 
fourth  part  of  the  whole,  and  which  would  require  to  be  yet 
farther  winnowed,  were  the  purpose  to  leave  only  what  was 
sterling  and  in  Dryden's  best  manner.  Mr.  Bell's  edition, 
which  comprises  in  three  volumes  all  Dryden's  original  non- 
dramatic  poetry,  and  the  best  collection  of  his  prologues  and 


136  DRYDEN,   AND  THE 

epilogues  yet  made,  is  itself  a  surfeit  of  matter.  It  is  exactly 
such  an  edition  of  Dryden  as  ought  to  be  included  in  a  series 
of  the  English  poets  intended  to  be  complete ;  but  even  in  it 
there  is  more  of  dross  than  of  ore. 

What  is  the  reason  of  this?  How  is  it  that  in  Dryden, 
the  proportion  of  what  is  now  rubbish  to  what  is  still  precious 
as  a  literary  possession  is  so  much  greater  than  in  most  other 
writers  of  great  celebrity  ?  There  are  two  reasons  for  it.  The 
first  is,  that  originally,  and  in  its  own  nature,  much  of  the 
matter  that  Dryden  put  forth  was  not  of  a  kin  J  for  which  his 
genius  was  fitted.  Whatever  his  own  imagination  con- 
structed on  the  large  scale  was  mean  and  conventional. 
Wherever,  as  in  his  translations  of  Virgil  and  his  imitations 
of  Chaucer  and  Boccaccio,  he  employed  his  powers  of  lan- 
guage and  verse  in  refurbishing  matter  invented  by  others, 
the  poetical  substance  of  his  writings  is  valuable ;  but  the 
sheer  produce  of  his  own  imagination,  as  in  his  dramas,  is  in 
general  such  stuff  as  nature  disowns,  and  no  creature  can 
take  pleasure  in.  There  is  no  fine  power  of  dramatic  story, 
no  exquisite  invention  of  character  or  circumstance,  no  truth 
to  nature  in  ideal  landscape:  at  the  utmost,  there  is  con- 
ventional dramatic  situation,  with  an  occasional  flash  of 
splendid  dubious  imagery  such  as  may  be  struck  out  in  the 
heat  of  heroic  declamation.     Thus — 

"  I  am  as  free  as  Nature  first  made  man, 
Ere  the  base  laws  of  servitude  began, 
When  wild  in  woods  the  noble  savage  ran." 

Dryden's  natural  powers,  as  all  his  critics  have  remarked,  lay 
not  so  much  in  the  imaginative  as  in  the  didactic,  the  decla- 
matory, and  the  ratiociuative.  What  Johnson  claims  for 
him,  and  what  seems  to  have  been  claimed  for  him  in  his  own 
lifetime,  was  the  credit  of  being  one  of  the  best  reasoners 
in  verse  that  ever  wrote.  Mr.  Macaulay  means  very  much  the 
same  thing  when  he  calls  Dryden  a  great  "  critical  poet,"  and 
the  founder  of  the  ''  critical  school  of  English  poetry."  Pro- 
bably Milton  meant  something  of  the  kind,  when  he  said 
that  Dryden  was  a  rhymer,  but  no  poet.  It  was  in  decla- 
matory and  didactic  rhyme,  with  all  that  could  consist  with 


^ 


LITERATURE   OF  THE   RESTORATION.  137 


it,  that  Dryden  excelled.  It  was  in  the  metrical  utterance  of 
weighty  sentences,  in  the  metrical  conduct  of  an  argument, 
in  vehement  satirical  invective,  and  in  such  passages  of  lyric 
passion  as  depended  for  their  effect  on  rolling  grandeur  of 
sound,  that  he  was  pre-eminently  great.  Even  his  imagina- 
tion worked  more  powerfully,  and  his  perceptions  of  physical 
circumstance  became  keener  and  truer,  under  the  influence  of 
polemical  rage,  the  pursuit  of  terse  maxim,  or  the  passion  for 
sonorous  declamation.     Thus — 

"  And  every  shekel  which  he  can  receive 
Shall  cost  a  limb  of  his  prerogative." 

Or,  in  his  character  of  Shaftesbury, — 

**  Of  these  the  false  Achitophel  was  first : 
A  name  to  all  succeeding  ages  curst ; 
For  close  designs  and  crooked  counsels  fit ; 
Sagacious,  bold,  and  turbulent  of  wit ; 
Restless,  unfix'd  in  principles  and  place ; 
In  power  unpleased,  impatient  of  disgrace ; 
A  fiery  soul,  which,  working  out  its  way, 
Fretted  the  pigmy  body  to  decay. 
And  o'er-iuform'd  the  tenement  of  clay. 
A  daring  pilot  in  extremity, 

Pleased  with  the  danger  when  the  waves  went  high, 
He  sought  the  storn'o;  but,  for  a  calm  unfit. 
Would  steer  too  nigh  the  sands,  to  boast  his  wit. 
Great  wits  are  sure  to  madness  near  allied, 
And  thin  partitions  do  their  bounds  divide." 

Or,  in  the  lines  which  he  sent  to  Tonson  the  publisher  as  a 
specimen  of  what  he  could  do  in  the  way  of  portrait-painting, 
if  Tonson  did  not  send  him  supplies — 

"  With  leering  looks,  bull-faced,  and  freckled  fair, 
With  two  left  legs,  and  Judas-coloured  hair, 
And  frowzy  pores,  that  taint  the  ambient  air." 

And,  again,  in  every  passage  in  the  noble  ode  on  Alexander's 

Feast,  as  thus — 

**  With  ravished  ears 
The  monarch  hears; 
Assvmies  the  god, 
Affects  to  nod. 
And  seems  to  shake  the  spheres." 

In  satire,  in  critical  disquisition,  in  aphoristic  verse,  or  in 
lyrical  grandiloquence,  Dryden  was  in  his  natural  element ; 
and  one  reason  why,  of  all  the  matter  of  his  voluminous 
works,  so  small  a  portion  is  of  permanent  literary  value,  is 


138  DRYDEN,   AND   THE 

that,  in  his  attempts  after  literary  variety,  he  could  not  or 
would  not  restrict  himself  within  these  proper  limits  of  his 
genius. 

But,  besides  this,  Dryden  was  a  slovenly  worker  within  his 
own  field.  Even  of  what  he  could  do  best,  he  did  little  con- 
tinuously in  a  thoroughly  careful  manner.  In  his  best  poem, 
there  are  not  twenty  consecutive  lines  without  some  logical 
incoherence,  some  confusion  of  metaphor,  some  inaccuracy  of 
language,  or  some  evident  strain  of  the  meaning  for  the  sake 
of  the  metre.  His  strength  lies  in  passages  and  weighty 
interspersed  lines,  not  in  whole  poems.  Even  in  Dryden^s 
lifetime  this  complaint  was  made.  It  was  hinted  at  in 
The  Rehearsal;  Rochester  speaks  of  Dry  den's  "slattern 
muse;"  and  Blackmore,  who  criticised  Dryden  in  his  old 
age,  expresses  the  common  opinion  distinctly  and  deli- 
berately— 

"  Into  the  melting-pot  wTien  Dryden  comes, 
What  horrid  stench  will  rise,  what  noisome  fumes  ! 
How  will  he  shrink,  when  all  his  lewd  allay, 
And  wicked  mixture,  shall  be  purged  away  ? 
When  once  his  boasted  heaps  ai*e  melted  down, 
A  chest-full  scarce  will  yield  one  sterling  crown ; 
But  what  remains  will  be  so  pure,  'twill  bear 
The  examination  of  the  most  severe." 

This  is  true,  though  it  was  Blackmore  who  said  it.  We 
think,  however,  that  Dryden's  slovenliness  consisted  not  so 
much  in  a  disposition  to  spare  pains,  as  in  a  constitutional 
robustness  which  rendered  artistic  perfection  all  but  impos- 
sible to  him,  even  when  he  laboured  hardest  to  attain  it.  Our 
notion  of  Dryden  is  that  he  was  originally  a  robust  man,  who, 
when  he  first  engaged  in  poetry,  could  produce  nothing  better 
than  strong  stanzas  of  rather  wooden  sound  and  mechanism ; 
who,  by  dint  of  perseverance  and  continual  work,  however, 
drilled  his  genius  into  higher  susceptibility,  and  a  conscious 
aptitude  and  mastery  in  certain  directions ;  and  who,  the 
older  he  grew,  became  mellower,  more  musical,  and  more 
imaginative,  simply  because  what  had  been  robustness  at  first 
had  by  long  practice  been  subdued  and  welded  into  flexibility 
and  nerve.  It  is  stated  of  Dryden,  that  in  his  earlier  life,  at 
least,  he  used,  as  a  preparation  for  writing,  to  induce  on  him- 


LITERATURE   OF   THE  RESTORATION.  139 

self  an  artificial  state  of  languor,  by  taking  medicine  or  let- 
ting blood.  The  trait,  we  think,  is  characteristic.  Dryden's 
whole  literary  career  was  but  a  metaphor  of  it.  Had  he  died 
before  1670,  or  even  before  1681,  when  his  Annus  Mirahilis 
was  still  his  most  ambitious  production,  he  would  have  been 
remembered  as  little  more  than  a  robust  versifier  ;  but,  living 
as  he  did  till  1700,  he  performed  work  which  has  entitled 
him  to  rank  among  English  poets.  As  a  contributor  to  the 
actual  body  of  our  literature,  and  as  a  man  who  produced  by 
his  influence  a  lasting  efiect  on  its  literary  methods,  Dryden's 
place  is  certainly  high  ;  and  we  are  glad  to  see  a  new  edition 
of  his  poems  so  admirably  edited,  and  put  forth  under  such 
good  auspices. 


DEAN    SWIFT/ 

In  dividing  the  history  of  English  literature  into  periods,  it  is 
customary  to  take  the  interval  between  the  year  1688  and  the 
year  1727  as  constituting  one  of  those  periods.  This  interval 
includes  the  reigns  of  William  III.,  Anne,  and  George  I.  If 
we  do  not  bind  ourselves  too  precisely  to  the  year  1727  as 
closing  the  period,  the  division  is  proper  enough.  There  are 
characteristics  about  the  time  thus  marked  out,  which  distin- 
guish it  from  previous  and  from  subsequent  portions  of  our 
literary  history.  Dryden,  Locke,  and  some  other  notabilities 
of  the  Kestoration,  lived  into  this  period,  and  may  be  regarded 
as  partly  belonging  to  it ;  but  the  names  more  peculiarly 
representing  it  are  those  of  Swift,  Burnet,  Addison,  Steele, 
Pope,  Shaftesbury,  Gay,  Arbuthnot,  Atterbury,  Prior,  Parnell, 
Bolingbroke,  Congreve,  Vanbrugh,  Farquhar,  Eowe,  Defoe, 
and  Gibber.  The  names  in  this  cluster  disperse  themselves 
over  the  three  reigns  which  the  period  includes,  some  of  them 
having  already  been  known  as  early  as  the  accession  of 
William,  while  others  survived  the  first  George,  and  continued 
to  add  to  their  celebrity  during  the  reign  of  his  successor;  but 
the  most  brilliant  portion  of  the  period  was  from  1702  to  1714 
or  thereby,  when  Queen  Anne  was  on  the  throne.  Hence 
the  name  of  "  wits  of  Queen  Anne's  reign,"  commonly  applied 
to  the  writers  of  the  whole  period. 

A  while  ago  this  used  to  be  spoken  of  as  the  golden  or 
Augustan  age  of  English  literature.  We  do  not  talk  in  that 
manner  now.  We  feel  that  when  we  get  among  the  authors 
of  the  times  of  Queen  Anne  and  the  first  George,  we  are 

*  British  Quarterly  Eeview,  October,  1854.— 1.  The  English  Humourists 
of  the  Eighteenth  Century.  A  Series  of  Lectures.  By  W.  M.  Thackeray. 
London:  1853. 

2.  The  Ufe  of  Swift.    By  Sir  Walter  Scott.    Edinburgh :  1848. 


DEAN  SWIFT.  141 

among  very  pleasant  and  very  clever  men,  but  by  no  means 
among  giants.^  In  coming  down  to  this  period  from  those 
going  before  it,  we  have  an  immediate  sensation  of  having 
left  the  region  of  ''  greatness"  behind  us.  We  still  find  plenty 
of  good  writing,  characterised  by  certain  qualities  of  trimness, 
artificial  gi-ace,  and  the  like,  to  a  degree  not  before  attained; 
here  and  there  also,  we  discern  something  like  real  power  and 
strength,  breaking  through  the  prevailing  element ;  but,  on 
the  whole,  there  is  an  absence  of  what,  except  by  a  compro- 
mise of  language,  could  be  called  '*  great."  It  is  the  same 
whether  we  regard  largeness  of  imaginative  faculty,  loftiness 
of  moral  spirit,  or  vigour  of  speculative  capacity,  as  principally 
concerned  in  imparting  the  character  of  "  greatness"  to  litera- 
ture. What  of  genius  in  the  ideal  survived  the  seventeenth 
century  in  England,  contented  itself  with  nice  little  imagina- 
tions of  scenes  and  circumstances  connected  with  the  artificial 
life  of  the  time ;  the  moral  quality  most  in  repute  was  kind- 
liness or  courtesy ;  and  speculation  did  not  go  beyond  that 
point  where  thought  retains  the  form  either  of  ordinary  good 
sense,  or  of  keen  momentary  wit.  No  sooner,  in  fact,  do  we  pass 
the  time  of  Milton,  than  we  feel  that  we  have  done  with  the 
sublimities.  A  kind  of  lumbering  largeness  does  remain  in  the 
intellectual  gait  of  Dryden  and  his  contemporaries,  as  if  the 
age  still  wore  the  armour  of  the  old  literary  forms,  though  not 
at  home  in  it ;  but  in  Pope's  days,  even  the  afiectation  of  the 
"  great'^  had  ceased.  Not  slowly  to  build  up  a  grand  poem  of 
continuous  ideal  action,  not  quietly  and  at  leisure  to  weave 
forth  tissues  of  fantastic  imagery,  not  perseveringly  and  labo- 
riously to  prosecute  one  track  of  speculation  and  bring  it  to  a 
close,  not  earnestly  and  courageously  to  throw  one's  whole  soul 
into  a  work  of  moral  agitation  and  reform,  was  now  what  was 
regarded  as  natural  in  literature.  On  the  contrary,  he  was  a 
wit,  or  a  literary  man,  who,  living  in  the  midst  of  the  social 
bustle,  or  on  the  skirts  of  it,  could  throw  forth  in  the  easiest 
manner,  little  essays,  squibs,  and  j'eux  d'es^rit,  pertinent  to 
the  rapid  occasions  of  the  hour,  and  never  tasking  tlie  mind 
too  long  or  too  much.  This  was  the  time  when  that  great 
distinction  between  Whiggism   and  Toryism,  which,  for  a 


142  DEAN  SWIFT. 

century-and-a-half  has  existed  in  Great  Britain  as  a  kind  of 
permanent  social  condition,  affecting  the  intellectual  activity 
of  all  natives  from  the  moment  of  their  birth,  first  began  to 
be  practically  operative.  It  has,  on  the  whole,  been  a  wretched 
thing  for  the  mind  of  England  to  have  had  this  necessity  of 
being  either  a  Whig  or  a  Tory  put  so  prominently  before  it. 
Perhaps,  in  all  times,  some  similar  necessity  of  taking  one 
side  or  the  other  in  some  current  form  of  controversy  has 
afilicted  the  leading  minds,  and  tormented  the  more  genial 
among  them ;  but  we  question  if  ever  in  this  country  in  pre- 
vious times  there  was  a  form  of  controversy,  so  little  to  be 
identified,  in  real  reason,  with  the  one  only  true  controversy 
between  good  and  evil,  and  so  capable,  therefore,  of  breeding 
confusion  and  mischief,  when  so  identified  in  practice,  as  this 
poor  controversy  of  Whig  and  Tory  which  came  in  with  the 
Eevolution.  To  be  called  upon  to  be  either  a  Puritan  or  a 
Cavalier — there  was  some  possibility  of  complying  with  that 
call,  and  still  leading  a  tolerably  free  and  large  intellectual  life  ; 
though  possibly  it  was  one  cause  of  the  rich  mental  development 
of  the  Elizabethan  epoch  that  the  men  of  that  time  were  exempt 
from  any  personal  obligation  of  attending  even  to  this  dis- 
tinction. But,  to  be  called  upon  to  be  either  a  Whig  or  a 
Tory — why,  how  on  earth  can  one  retain  any  of  the  larger 
humanities  about  him,  if  society  is  to  hold  him  by  the  neck 
between  two  stools  such  as  these,  pointing  alternately  to  the  one 
and  to  the  other,  and  incessantly  asking  him  on  which  of  the 
two  he  means  to  sit  ?  Into  a  mind  trained  to  regard  adhesive- 
ness to  one  or  other  of  these  stools  as  the  first  rule  of  duty  or 
of  prudence,  what  thoughts  of  any  high  interest  can  find  their 
way  ?  Or,  if  any  such  do  find  their  way,  how  are  they  to  be 
adjusted  to  so  mean  a  rule  ?  Now-a-days,  our  higher  spirits 
solve  the  difiiculty  by  kicking  both  stools  down,  and  plainly 
telling  society  that  they  will  not  bind  themselves  to  sit  on 
either,  or  even  on  both  put  together.  Hence  partly  it  is  that, 
in  recent  times,  we  have  had  renewed  specimens  of  the  "great" 
or  "  sublime"  in  literature — the  poetry,  for  example,  of  a 
Byron,  a  Wordsworth,  or  a  Tennyson.  But,  in  the  interval 
between  1688  and  1727,  there  was  not  one  wit  alive  whom 


DEAN  SWIFT.  143 

society  let  off  from  the  necessity  of  being,  and  declaring 
himself,  either  a  Whig  or  a  Tory.  Constitutionally,  and  by 
circumstances.  Pope  was  the  man  who  could  have  most  easily 
obtained  the  exemption ;  but  even  Pope  professed  himself  a 
Tory.  Addison  and  Steele  were  Whigs.  In  short,  every 
literary  man  was  bound,  by  the  strongest  of  all  motives,  to 
keep  in  view,  as  a  permanent  fact  qualifying  his  literary  under- 
takings, the  distinction  between  Whiggism  and  Toryism,  and 
to  give  to  at  least  a  considerable  part  of  his  writings  the 
character  of  pamphlets  or  essays  in  the  service  of  his  party. 
To  minister  by  the  pen  to  the  occasions  of  Whiggism  and 
Toryism  was,  therefore,  the  main  business  of  the  wits  both  in 
prose  and  in  verse.  Out  of  these  occasions  of  ministration 
there  of  course  arose  personal  quarrels,  and  these  furnished 
fresh  opportunities  to  the  men  of  letters.  Critics  of  previous 
writings  coifld  be  satirized  and  lampooned,  and  thus  the  circle 
of  subjects  was  widened.  Moreover,  there  was  abundant 
matter,  capable  of  being  treated  consistently  with  either 
Whiggism  or  Toryism,  in  the  social  foibles  and  peculiarities 
of  the  day,  as  we  see  in  the  Tatler  and  the  Spectator.  Nor 
could  a  genial  mind  like  that  of  Steele,  a  man  of  taste  and 
fine  thought  like  Addison,  and  an  intellect  so  keen,  exquisite, 
and  sensitive  as  that  of  Pope,  fail  to  variegate  and  surround 
all  the  duller  and  harder  literature  thus  called  into  being,  with 
more  lasting  touches  of  the  humorous,  the  fanciful,  the  sweet, 
the  impassioned,  the  meditative,  and  the  ideal.  Thus  from 
one  was  obtained  the  character  of  a  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley^ 
from  another  a  Vision  of  Mirza,  and  from  the  third  a  Windsor 
Forest,  an  Epistle  of  Heloise,  and  much  else  that  delights  us 
still.  After  all,  however,  it  remains  true  that  the  period  of 
English  literature  now  in  question,  whatever  admirable  charac- 
teristics it  may  possess,  exhibits  a  remarkable  deficiency  of 
what,  with  recollections  of  former  periods  to  guide  us  in  our 
use  of  CDithets,  we  should  call  great  or  sublime. 

With  the  single  exception  of  Pope,  and  excepting  him  only 
out  of  deference  to  his  peculiar  position  as  the  poet  or  metri- 
cal artist  of  his  day,  the  greatest  name  in  the  history  of 
English  literature  during  the  early  part  of  last  century  is  that 


144  DEAN   SWIFT. 

of  Swift.  In  certain  fine  and  deep  qualities,  Addison  and 
Steele  and  perhaps  Farquhar  excelled  him,  just  as  in  the 
succeeding  generation  Goldsmith  had  a  finer  vein  of  genius 
than  was  to  be  found  in  Johnson  with  all  his  massiveness  ; 
but  in  natural  brawn  and  strength,  in  original  energy  and 
force  and  imperiousness  of  brain,  he  excelled  them  all.  It 
was  about  the  year  1702,  when  he  was  already  thirty-five 
years  of  age,  that  this  strangest  specimen  of  an  Irishman,  or 
of  an  Englishman  born  in  Ireland,  first  attracted  attention  in 
London  literary  circles.  The  scene  of  his  first  appearance 
was  Button's  cofiee-house ;  the  witnesses  were  Addison, 
Ambrose  Philips,  and  other  wits,  belonging  to  Addison's 
little  senate,  who  used  to  assemble  there. 

"  They  had  for  several  successive  days  observed  a  strange  clergyman  come 
into  the  coffee-house,  who  seemed  utterly  unacquainted  with  any  of  those  who 
frequented  it,  and  whose  custom  it  was  to  lay  his  hat  down  on  a  table,  and 
walk  backward  and  forward  at  a  good  pace  for  half  an  hour  or  an  hour,  with- 
out speaking  to  any  mortal,  or  seeming  in  the  least  to  attend  to  anything  that 
was  going  forward  there.  He  then  used  to  take  up  his  hat,  pay  his  money  at 
the  bar,  and  walk  away  without  opening  his  lips.  After  having  observed  this 
singular  behaviour  for  some  time,  they  concluded  him  to  be  out. of  his  senses ; 
and  the  name  that  he  went  by  among  them,  was  that  of  the  *  mad  parson.' 
This  made  them  more  than  usually  attentive  to  his  motions ;  and  one  evening, 
as  Mr.  Addison  and  the  rest  were  observing  him,  they  saw  him  cast  his  eyes 
several  times  on  a  gentleman  in  boots,  who  seemed  to  be  just  come  out  of  the 
country,  and  at  last  advance  towards  him  as  intending  to  address  him.  They 
were  all  eager  to  hear  what  this  dumb  mad  parson  had  to  say,  and  imme- 
diately quitted  their  seats  to  get  near  him.  Swift  went  up  to  the  country 
gentleman,  and  in  a  very  abrupt  manner,  without  any  previous  salute,  asked 
him,  'Pray,  sir,  do  you  remember  any  good  weather  in  the  world?'  The 
countiy  gentleman,  after  staring  a  little  at  the  singularity  of  his  manner,  and 
the  oddity  of  the  question,  answered,  '  Yes,  sir,  I  thank  God  I  remember  a 
great  deal  of  good  weather  in  my  time.'  '  That  is  more,'  said  Swift,  *  than  I 
can  say ;  I  never  remember  any  weather  that  was  not  too  hot  or  too  cold,  too 
wet  or  too  dry ;  but,  however  God  Almighty  contrives  it,  at  the  end  of  the 
year  'tis  all  very  well.'  Upon  saying  this,  he  took  up  his  hat,  and  without 
uttering  a  syllable  more,  or  taking  the  least  notice  of  any  one,  walked  out  of 
the  coffee-house ;  leaving  all  those  who  had  been  spectators  of  this  odd  scene 
staring  after  him,  and  still  more  confirmed  in  the  opinion  of  his  being  mad." — 
Dr.,  Sheridan's  I/ife  of  Swift,  quoted  in  Scott's  Life. 

If  the  company  present  had  had  sufficient  means  of  inform- 
ation, they  would  have  found  that  the  mad  parson  with  the 
harsh  swarthy  features,  and  eyes  "  azure  as  the  heavens," 
whose  oddities  thus  amused  them,  was  Jonathan  Swift,  then 
clergyman  of  Laracor,  a  rural  parish  in  the  diocese  of  Meath 
in  Ireland.  They  would  have  found  that  he  was  an  Irishman 
by  birth,  though  of  pure  English  descent ;  that  he  could  trace 


DEAN  SWIFT.  145 

a  relationship  to  Drjden ;  tliat,  being  Ibom  after  his  father's 
death,  he  had  been  educated,  at  the  expense  of  his  relatives, 
at  Trinity  College,  Dublin;  that,  leaving  Ireland  in  his 
twenty-second  year,  and  with  but  a  sorry  character  from  the 
College  authorities,  he  had  been  received  as  a  humble  depen- 
dent into  the  family  of  Sir  William  Temple,  at  Sheen  and 
Moorpark,  near  London,  that  courtly  Whig  and  ex-ambassador 
being  distantly  connected  with  his  mother's  family ;  that  here, 
while  acting  as  Sir  William's  secretary,  amanuensis,  librarian, 
and  what  not,  he  had  begun  to  write  verses  and  other  trifles, 
some  of  which  he  had  shown  to  Dryden,  who  had  told  him  in 
reply  that  they  were  sad  stuff,  and  that  he  would  never  be  a 
poet ;  that  still,  being  of  a  restless,  ambitious  temper,  he  had 
not  given  up  hopes  of  obtaining  introduction  into  public  em- 
ployment in  England  through  Sir  William  Temple's  influence; 
that,  at  length,  at  the  age  of  twenty-eight,  despairing  of  any- 
thing, better,  he  had  quarrelled  with  Sir  William,  returned  to 
Ireland,  taken  priest's  orders,  and  settled  in  a  living;  that 
again,  disgusted  with  Ireland  and  his  prospects  in  that 
country,  he  had  come  back  to  Moorpark,  and  resided  there 
till  1699,  when  Sir  William's  death  had  obliged  him  finally 
to  return  to  Ireland,  and  accept  first  a  chaplaincy  to  Lord 
Justice  Berkeley,  and  then  his  present  living  in  the  diocese  of 
Meath.  If  curious  about  the  personal  habits  of  this  restless 
Irish  parson,  they  might  have  found  that  he  had  already  won 
the  reputation  of  an  eccentric  in  his  own  parish  and  district ; 
performing  his  parochial  duties  when  at  home  with  scrupulous 
care,  yet  by  his  language  and  manners  often  shocking  all  ideas 
of  clerical  decorum,  and  begetting  a  doubt  as  to  his  sincerity 
in  the  religion  he  professed ;  boisterous,  fierce,  overbearing, 
and  insulting  to  all  about  him,  yet  often  doing  acts  of  real 
kindness ;  exact  and  economical  in  his  management  of  money 
to  the  verge  of  actual  parsimony,  yet,  on  occasion,  spending 
his  money  freely,  and  never  without  pensioners  living  on  his 
bounty.  They  would  have  found  that  he  was  habitually 
irritable,  and  that  he  was  subject  to  a  recurring  giddiness  of 
the  head,  or  vertigo,  which  he  had  brought  on,  as  he  thought 
himself,  by  a  surfeit  of  fruit  while  staying  with  Sir  William 

L 


146  DEAN  SWIFT. 

Temple,  at  Sheen.  And,  what  might  have  been  the  best 
bit  of  gossip  of  all,  they  would  have  foimd  that,  though  un- 
married, and  entertaining  a  most  unaccountable  and  violent 
aversion  to  the  very  idea  of  marriage,  he  had  taken  over  to 
reside  with  him,  or  close  to  his  neighbourhood,  in  Ireland, 
a  certain  young  and  beautiful  girl,  named  Hester  Johnson, 
with  whom  he  had  formed  an  acquaintance  in  Sir  William 
Temple's  house,  where  she  had  been  brought  up,  and  where, 
though  she  passed  as  a  daughter  of  Sir  William's  steward, 
she  was  believed  to  be,  in  reality,  a  natural  daughter  of  Sir 
William  himself.  They  would  have  found  that  his  relations 
to  this  girl,  whom  he  had  himself  educated  from  her  child- 
hood at  Sheen  and  Moorpark,  were  of  a  very  singular  and 
puzzling  kind;  that  on  the  one  hand  she  was  devotedly 
attached  to  him,  and  on  the  other  he  cherished  a  passionate 
affection  for  her,  wrote  and  spoke  of  her  as  his  "  Stella,"  and 
liked  always  to  have  her  near  him;  yet  that  a  marriage 
between  them  seemed  not  to  be  thought  of  by  either ;  and 
that,  in  order  to  have  her  near  him  without  giving  rise  to 
scandal,  he  had  taken  the  precaution  to  bring  over  an  elderly 
maiden  lady,  called  Mrs.  Dingley,  to  reside  with  her  as  a 
companion,  and  was  most  careful  to  be  in  her  society  only 
when  this  Mrs.  Dingley  was  present. 

There  was  mystery  and  romance  enough,  therefore,  about 
the  wild,  black-browed  Irish  parson,  who  attracted  the  regards 
of  the  wits  in  Button's  coffee-house.  What  had  brought  him 
there?  That  was  partly  a  mystery  too;  but  the  mystery 
would  have  been  pretty  well  solved  if  it  had  been  known  that, 
uncouth-looking  clerical  lout  as  he  was,  he  was  an  author 
like  the  rest  of  them,  having  just  written  a  political  pamphlet 
which  was  making  or  was  to  make  a  good  deal  of  noise  in 
the  world,  and  having  at  that  moment  in  his  pocket  at  least 
one  other  piece  which  he  was  about  to  publish.  The  political 
pamphlet  was  an  Essay  on  the  Civil  Discords  in  Athens  and 
Rome,  having  an  obvious  bearing  on  certain  dissensions  then 
threatening  to  break  up  the  Whig  party  in  Great  Britain. 
It  was  received  as  a  vigorous  piece  of  writing  on  the  minis- 
terial side,  and  was  ascribed  by  some  to  Lord  Somers,  and  by 


p 


DEAN   SWIFT.  147 


others  to  Burnet.  Swift  had  come  over  to  claim  it,  and  to 
see  what  it  and  his  former  connexion  with  Temple  could  do 
for  him  among  the  leading  Whigs.  For  the  truth  was,  an 
ambition  equal  to  his  consciousness  of  power  gnawed  at  the 
heart  of  this  furious  and  gifted  man,  whom  a  perverse  fate 
had  flung  away  into  an  obscure  vicarage  on  the  wrong  side 
of  the  channel.  His  books,  his  garden,  his  canal  with  its 
wdllows  at  Laracor ;  his  dearly-beloved  Koger  Coxe,  and  the 
other  perplexed  and  admiring  parishioners  of  Laracor  over 
whom  he  domineered ;  his  clerical  colleagues  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood ;  and  even  the  society  of  Stella,  the  wittiest  and 
best  of  her  sex,  whom  he  loved  better  than  any  other  creature 
on  earth — all  these  were  insufficient  to  occupy  the  craving  void 
in  his  mind.  He  hated  Ireland,  and  regarded  his  lot  there  as 
one  of  banishment ;  he  longed  to  be  in  London,  and  struggling 
in  the  centre  of  whatever  was  going  on.  About  the  date  of 
his  appointment  to  the  living  of  Laracor  he  had  lost  the  rich 
deanery  of  Derry,  which  Lord  Berkeley  had  meant  to  give 
him,  in  consequence  of  a  notion  on  the  part  of  the  bishop  of 
tlie  diocese  that  he  was  a  resfless,  ingenious  young  man,  who, 
instead  of  residing,  would  be  "  eternally  flying  backwards  and 
forwards  to  London."  The  bishop's  perception  of  his  charac- 
ter was  just.  At  or  about  the  very  time  that  the  wits  at 
Button's  saw  him  stalking  up  and  down  in  the  coflee-house, 
the  priest  of  Laracor  was  introducing  himself  to  Somers, 
Halifax,  Sunderland,  and  others,  and  stating  the  terms  on 
which  he  would  support  the  Whigs  with  his  pen.  Even 
then,  it  seems,  he  took  high  ground,  and  let  it  be  known  that 
he  was  no  mere  hireling.  The  following,  written  at  a  much 
later  period,  is  his  own  explanation  of  the  nature  and  limits 
of  his  Whiggism,  at  the  time  when  he  first  ofiered  the  Whigs 
his  services : — 

''  It  was  then  (1701-2)  I  began  to  trouble  myself  with  the  differences 
between  the  principles  of  Whig  and  Tory ;  having  formerly  employed  my- 
self in  other,  and,  I  think,  much  better  speculations.  I  talked  often  upon  this 
subject  with  Lord  Somers ;  told  him  that,  having  been  long  conversant  with 
the  Greek  and  Latin  authors,  and  therefore  a  lover  of  liberty,  I  found  myselt 
much  inclined  to  be  what  they  call  a  Whig  in  politics;  and  that,  besides, 
I  thought  it  impossible,  upon  any  other  principles,  to  defend  or  submit  to  tne 
Revolution ;  but  as  to  religion,  I  confessed  myself  to  be  a  High-Churchman, 

l2 


148  DEAN   SWIFT. 

and  that  I  could  not  conceive  how  any  one  who  wore  the  habit  of  a 
clergyman  could  be  otherwise :  that  I  had  observed  very  well  with  what  in- 
solence and  haughtiness  some  lords  of  the  High  Church  party  treated  not 
only  their  own  chaplains,  but  all  other  clergymen  whatsoever,  and  thought 
this  was  sufficiently  recompensed  by  their  professions  of  zeal  to  the  Church  : 
that  I  had  Hkewise  observed  how  the  Whig  lords  took  a  direct  contrary 
measure,  treated  the  persons  of  particular  clergymen  with  particular  courtesy, 
but  showed  much  contempt  and  ill-will  for  the  order  in  general :  that  I  knew 
it  was  necessary  for  their  party  to  make  their  bottom  as  wide  as  they  could, 
by  taking  all  denominations  of  Protestants  to  be  members  of  their  body  :  that 
I  would  not  enter  into  the  mutual  reproaches  made  by  the  violent  men  on 
either  side  :  but  that  the  connivance  or  encouragement  given  by  the  Whigs 
to  those  writers  of  pamphlets  who  reflected  upon  the  whole  body  of  the  clergy, 
without  any  exception,  would  unite  the  Church  to  one  man  to  oppose  them ; 
and  that  I  doubted  his  lordship's  friends  did  not  consider  the  consequences 
of  this." 

Even  with,  these  limitations  the  assistance  of  so  energetic 
a  man  as  the  parson  of  Laracor  was  doubtless  welcome  to  the 
Whigs.  His  former  connexion  with  the  stately  old  Revolu- 
tion Whig,  Sir  William  Temple,  may  have  prepared  the  way 
for  him,  as  it  had  already  been  the  means  of  making  him 
known  in  some  aristocratic  families.  But  there  was  evidence 
in  his  personal  bearing  and  his  writings  that  he  was  not 
a  man  to  be  neglected.  And  if  there  had  been  any  doubt  on 
the  subject  on  his  first  presentation  of  himself  to  ministers, 
the  publication  of  his  Battle  of  the  Boohs  and  his  Tale  of  a 
Tub  in  1703  and  1704  would  have  set  it  overwhelmingly  at 
rest.  The  author  of  these  works  (and  though  they  were 
anonymous,  they  were  at  once  referred  to  Swift)  could  not 
but  be  acknowledged  as  the  first  prose  satirist,  and  one  of  the 
most  formidable  writers  of  the  age.  On  his  subsequent  visits 
to  Button's,  therefore— and  they  were  frequent  enough;  for, 
as  the  Bishop  of  Derry  had  foreseen,  he  was  often  an  absentee 
from  his  parish — the  mad  Irish  parson  was  no  longer  a 
stranger  to  the  company.  Addison,  Steele,  Tickell,  Philips, 
and  the  other  Whig  wits  came  to  know  him  well,  and  to  feel 
his  weight  among  them  in  their  daily  convivial  meetings. 
**  To  Dr.  Jonathan  Swift,  the  most  agreeable  companion,  the 
truest  friend,  and  the  greatest  genius  of  the  age,"  was  the 
inscription  written  by  Addison  on  a  copy  of  his  Travels 
presented  to  Swift ;  and  it  shows  what  opinion  Addison  and 
those  about  him  had  formed  of  the  author  of  the  Tale  of  a  Tub. 

Thus,  passing  and  repassing  between  Laracor  and  London, 


DEAN  SWIFT.  149 

now  lording  it  over  his  Irish  parishioners,  and  now  filling  the 
literary  and  Whig  haunts  of  the  great  metropolis  with  the 
terror  of  his  merciless  wit  and  talk  behind  his  back  of  his 
eccentricities  and  rude  manners,  Swift  spent  the  interval 
between  1702  and  1710,  or  between  his  thirty-sixth  and  his 
forty-fourth  year.  His  position  as  a  High-Church  Whig, 
however,  was  an  anomalous  one.  In  the  first  place,  it  was 
difficult  to  see  how  such  a  man  could  honestly  be  in  the 
Church  at  all.  People  were  by  no  means  strict  in  those 
days  in  their  notions  of  the  clerical  character;  but  the 
Tale  of  a  Tub  was  a  strong  dose  even  then  to  have  come  from 
a  clergyman.  If  Voltaire  afterwards  recommended  the  book 
as  a  masterly  satire  against  religion  in  general,  it  cannot  be 
wondered  at  that  an  outcry  arose  among  Swift's  contem- 
poraries respecting  the  profanity  of  the  book.  It  is  true,  Peter 
and  Jack,  as  the  representatives  of  Popery  and  Presby- 
terianism,  came  in  for  the  greatest  share  of  the  author's 
scurrility ;  and  Martin,  as  the  representative  of  the  Church  of 
England,  was  left  with  the  honours  of  the  story:  but  the 
whole  structure  and  spirit  of  .i.ne  story,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
oaths  and  other  irreverences  mingled  with  its  language,  was 
well  calculated  to  shock  the  more  serious  even  of  Martin's 
followers,  who  could  not  but  see  that  rank  infidelity  alone 
would  be  a  gainer  by  the  book.  Accordingly,  despite  of  all 
that  Swift  could  afterwards  do,  the  fact  that  he  had  written 
this  book  left  a  public  doubt  as  to  his  Christianity.  It  is 
quite  possible,  however,  that,  with  a  very  questionable  kind 
of  belief  in  Christianity,  he  may  have  been  a  conscientious 
High-Churchman,  zealous  for  the  social  defence  and  aggran- 
disement of  the  ecclesiastical  institution  with  which  he  was 
connected.  Whatever  that  institution  was  originally  based 
upon,  it  existed  as  part  and  parcel  of  the  commonwealth  of 
England,  rooted  in  the  soil  of  men's  habits  and  interests,  and 
intertwined  with  the  whole  system  of  social  order ;  and  just 
as  a  Bralimin,  lax  enough  in  his  own  speculative  allegiance 
to  the  Brahminical  faith,  might  still  desire  to  maintain 
Brahminism  as  a  vast  pervading  establishment  in  Hindostan, 
so  might   Swift,  with  a  heart  and  a  head  dubious  enough 


150  DEAN  SWIFT. 

respecting  men's  eternal  interest  in  the  facts  of  tlie  Jud^ean 
record,  see  a  use  notwithstanding  in  that  fabric  of  bishoprics, 
deaneries,   prebends,  parochial  livings,  and  curacies,  which 
ancient  belief  in  those  facts  had  first  created  and  put  together. 
This  kind  of  respect  for  the  Church  Establishment  is  still  very 
prevalent.   It  is  a  most  excellent  thing,  it  is  thought  by  many, 
to  have  a  cleanly,  cultured,  gentlemanly  man,  invested  with 
authority  in  every  parish  throughout  the  land,  who  can  look 
after  what  is  going  on,  fill  up  schedules,  give  advice,  and  take 
the  lead  in  all  parish  business.     That  Swift's  faith  in  the 
Church  included  no  more  than  this  perception  of  its  uses  as 
a  vast  administrative  and  educational  establishment,  we  will 
not  take  upon  us  to  say.      Mr.  Thackeray,  indeed,  openly 
avows  his  opinion  that  Swift  had  no  belief  in  the  Christian 
religion.     "  Swift's,"  he  says,  "  was  a  reverent,  was  a  pious 
spirit — he  could  love  and  could  pray;"  but  such  religion  as 
he  had,  Mr.  Thackeray  hints,  was  a  kind  of  mad,  despairing 
Deism,   and    had    nothing   of    Christianity    in   it.     Hence, 
"  having  put  that   cassock   on,   it   poisoned  him ;    he   was 
strangled  in  his  bands. '^     The  question  thus  broached  as  to 
the  nature  of  Swift's  religion  is  too  deep  to  be  discussed  here. 
Though  we  would   not  exactly  say,  with  Mr.   Thackeray, 
that  Swift's  was  a  "reverent"  and  "  pious"  spirit,  there  are, 
as  he  phrases  it,  breakings  out  of  "  the  stars  of  religion  and 
love"  shining  in  the  serene  blue  through   "  the  driving  clouds 
and   the  maddened    hurricane   of   Swift's   life ; ''    and   this, 
though  vague,  is  about  all  that  we  have  warrant  for  saying. 
As  to  the  zeal  of  his  Churchmanship,  however,  there  is  no 
doubt  at  all.     There  was  not  a  man  in  the  British  realms 
more  pugnacious  in  the  interests  of  his  order,  more  resolute 
in   defending*  the  prerogatives   of  the   Church   of  England 
against  Dissenters  and  others  desirous  of  limiting  them,  or 
more  anxious  to  elevate  the  social  position  and  intellectual 
character  of  the  clergy,  than  the  author  of  the  Tale  of  a  Tub, 
No  veteran  commander  of  a  regiment  could  hav.e  had  more 
of  the  military  than  the  parson  of  Laracor  had  of  the  eccle- 
siastical esprit  de  corps  ;  and,  indeed.  Swift's  known  dislike  to 
the  military  may  be  best  explained  as  the  natm'al  jealousy  of 


DEAN  SWIFT.  151 

tlie  surplice  at  the  larger  consideration  accorded  by  society  to 
the  scarlet  coat.  Almost  all  Swift's  writings  between  1702 
and  1710  are  assertions  of  his  High-Church  sentiments,  and 
vindications  of  the  establishment  against  its  assailants.  Thus 
in  1708  came  forth  his  Letter  on  the  Sacramental  Test,  a  hot 
High-Church  and  anti-Dissenter  pamphlet ;  and  this  was 
followed  in  the  same  year  by  his  Sentiments  of  a  Church  of 
England  man  with  respect  to  Religion  and  Government^  and 
by  his  ironical  argument,  aimed  at  free-thinkers  and  latitudi- 
narians,  entitled  Reasons  against  Abolishing  Christianity, 
In  1709  he  published  a  graver  pamphlet,  under  the  name  of 
a  Project  for  the  Advancement  of  Religion,  in  which  he  urged 
certain  measures  for  the  reform  of  public  morals  and  the 
strengthening  of  the  Establishment,  recommending  in  parti- 
cular a  scheme  of  Church-extension.  Thus,  with  all  his 
readiness  to  help  the  Whigs  politically,  Swift  was  certainly 
faithful  to  his  High-Church  principles.  But,  as  we  have 
said,  a  High-Church  Whig  was  an  anomaly  which  the 
Whigs  refused  to  comprehend.  Latitudinarians,  low  Church- 
men, and  Dissenters,  did  uot  know  what  to  make  of  a 
Whiggism  in  state-politics  which  was  conjoined  with  the 
strongest  form  of  ecclesiastical  Toryism.  Hence,  in  spite  of 
all  his  ability.  Swift  was  not  a  man  that  the  Whigs  could 
patronise  and  prefer.  They  were  willing  to  have  the  benefit 
of  his  assistance,  but  their  favours  were  reserved  for  men 
more  wholly  their  own.  Various  things  were,  indeed,  talked 
of  for  Swift — the  secretaryship  to  the  proposed  embassy  of 
Lord  Berkeley  in  Vienna,  a  prebend  of  Westminster,  the 
office  of  historiographer-royal ;  nay,  even  a  bishopric  in  the 
American  colonies  ;  but  all  came  to  nothing.  Swift,  at  the 
age  of  forty-three,  and  certified  by  Addison  as  "  the  greatest 
genius  of  the  age,^'  was  still  only  an  Irish  parson,  with  some 
350Z.  or  400Z.  a  year.  How  strange  if  the  plan  of  the 
Transatlantic  bishopric  had  been  carried  out,  and  Swift  had 
settled  in  Virginia ! 

Meanwhile,  though  neglected  by  the  English  Whigs,  Swift 
had  risen  to  be  a  leader  among  the  Irish  clergy ;  a  great  man 
in  their  convocations  and  other  ecclesiastical  assemblies.    The 


152  DEAN   SWIFT. 

object  which  the  Irish  clergy  then  had  at  heart  was  to 
procure  from  the  Government  an  extension  to  Ireland  of  a 
boon  granted  several  years  before  to  the  clergy  of  England, 
namely,  the  remission  of  the  tax  levied  by  the  Crown  on  the 
revenues  of  the  Church  since  the  days  of  Henry  VIII.,  in 
the  shape  of  tenths  and  first-fruits.  This  remission,  which 
would  have  amounted  to  about  16,000?.  a  year,  the  Whigs 
were  not  disposed  to  grant,  the  corresponding  remission  in 
the  case  of  England  not  having  been  followed  by  the  ex- 
pected benefits.  Archbishop  King  and  the  other  prelates 
were  glad  to  have  Swift  as  their  agent  in  this  business  ;  and 
accordingly,  he  was  absent  from  Ireland  for  upwards  of 
twelve  months  continuously  in  the  years  1708  and  1709.  It 
was  during  this  period  that  he  set  London  in  roars  of 
laughter  by  his  famous  BickerstafF  hoax,  in  which  he  first 
predicted  the  death  of  Partridge,  the  astrologer,  at  a  par- 
ticular day  and  hour,  and  then  nearly  drove  the  wretched 
tradesman  mad  by  declaring,  when  the  time  was  come,  that 
the  prophecy  had  been  fulfilled,  and  publishing  a  detailed 
account  of  the  circumstances.  Out  of  this  BickerstafF  hoax, 
and  Swift's  talk  over  it  with  Addison  and  Steele,  arose  the 
TatleVy  prolific  parent  of  so  many  other  periodicals. 

The  year  1710  was  an  important  one  in  the  life  of  Swift. 
In  that  year  he  came  over  to  London,  resolved  in  his  own 
mind  to  have  a  settlement  of  accounts  with  the  Whigs,  or  to 
break  with  them  for  ever.  The  Irish  ecclesiastical  business 
of  the  tenths  and  first-fruits  was  still  his  pretext,  but  he  had 
many  other  arrears  to  introduce  into  the  account.  Accord- 
ingly, after  some  civil  skirmishing  with  Somers,  Halifax,  and 
his  other  old  friends,  then  just  turned  out  of  office,  he  openly 
transferred  his  allegiance  to  the  new  Tory  administration  of 
Harley  and  Bolingbroke.  The  4th  of  October,  not  quite  a 
month  after  his  arrival  in  London,  was  the  date  of  his  first 
interview  with  Harley ;  and,  from  that  day  forward  till  the 
dissolution  of  Harley' s  administration  by  the  death  of  Queen 
Anne,  in  1714,  Swift's  relations  with  Harley,  St.  John,  and 
the  other  ministers,  were  more  those  of  an  intimate  friend 
and  adviser  than  of  a  literary  dependent.     How  he   dined 


DEAN   SWIFT.  153 

almost  daily  with  Harley  or  St.  John  ;  how  he  bullied  them, 
and  made  them  beg  his  pardon  when  by  chance  they  ofFended 
him— either,  as  Harley  once  did,  by  offering  him  a  fifty- 
pound  note,  or,  as  St.  John  once  did,  by  appearing  cold  and 
abstracted  when  Swift  was  his  guest  at  dinner;  how  he 
obtained  from  them  not  only  the  settlement  of  the  Irish 
business,  but  almost  everything  else  he  asked ;  how  he  used 
his  influence  to  prevent  Steele,  Addison,  Congreve,  Kowe,  and 
his  other  Whig  literary  friends,  from  suffering  loss  of  office  by 
the  change  in  the  state  of  politics,  at  the  same  time  growing 
cooler  in  his  private  intercourse  with  Addison  and  poor  Dick, 
and  tending  more  to  young  Tory  writers,  such  as  Pope  and 
Parnell ;  how,  with  Pope,  Gay,  Arbuthnot,  Harley,  and  St. 
John,  he  formed  the  famous  club  of  the  ScriMerus  brother- 
hood, for  the  satire  of  literary  absurdities ;  how  he  wrote 
squibs,  pamphlets,  and  lampoons  innumerable  for  the  Tories 
and  against  the  Whigs,  and  at  one  time  actually  edited  a 
Tory  paper  called  the  Examiner :  all  this  is  to  be  gathered, 
in  most  interesting  detail,  from  his  epistolary  journal  to 
Stella,  in  which  he  punctually  kept  her  informed  of  all  his 
doings  during  his  long  three  years'  absence.  The  following 
is  a  description  of  him  at  the  height  of  his  Court  influence 
during  this  season  of  triumph,  from  the  Whiggish,  and 
therefore  somewhat  adverse  pen  of  Bishop  Kennet : — 

"  When  I  came  to  the  antechamber  (at  Court)  to  wait  before  prayers. 
Dr.  Swift  was  the  principal  man  of  talk  and  business,  and  acted  as  master  of 
requests.  He  was  soliciting  the  Earl  of  Arran  to  speak  to  his  brother,  the 
Duke  of  Ormond,  to  get  a  chaplain's  place  established  in  the  garrison  of  Hull 
for  Mr.  Fiddes,  a  clergyman  in  that  neighbourhood,  who  had  lately  been  in 
jail,  and  published  sermons  to  pay  the  fees.  He  was  promising  Mr.  Thorold 
to  vindertake  with  my  lord-treasurer  that,  according  to  his  petition,  he  should 
obtain  a  salary  of  200/.  per  annum  as  minister  of  the  English  church  at 
Kotterdam.  He  stopped  F.  Gwynne,  Esq ,  going  in  with  the  red  bag  to  the 
Queen,  and  told  him  aloud  he  had  something  to  say  to  him  from  my  lord- 
treasurer.  He  talked  with  the  son  of  Dr.  Davenant,  to  be  sent  abroad,  and 
took  out  his  pocket-book,  and  wrote  down  several  things  as  memoranda  to  do 
for  him.  He  turned  to  the  fire,  and  took  out  his  gold  watch,  and  telling  him 
the  time  of  day,  complained  it  was  very  late.  A  gentleman  said  he  was  too 
fast.  '  How  can  I  help  it,'  says  the  Doctor,  *  if  the  courtiers  give  me  a  watch 
that  won't  go  right?'  Then  he  instructed  a  young  nobleman  that  the  best 
poet  in  England  was  Mr.  Pope  (a  Papist),  who  had  begun  a  translation  of 
Homer  into  English  verse,  for  which  he  must  have  them  all  subscribe ;  *  for,' 
says  he, '  the  author  shall  not  begin  to  print  till  I  have  a  thousand  guineas  for 
him.*  Lord-treasurer,  after  leaving  the  Queen,  came  through  the  voouif 
beckoning  Dr.  Swift  to  follow  him :  both  went  off  just  before  prayers." 


154  DEAN  SWIFT. 

Let  us  see,  by  a  few  pickings  from  tlie  journal  to  Stella, 
in  what  manner  the  black-browed  Irish  vicar,  who  was  thus 
figuring  in  the  mornings  at  Court  as  the  friend  and  confidant 
of  Ministers,  and  almost  as  their  domineering  colleague,  was 
writing  home  from  his  lodging  in  the  evenings  to  the  '*  dear 
girls"  at  Laracor. 

Dec.  3,  1710.  "  Pshaw,  I  must  be  writing  to  those  dear  saucy  brats  every 
night  whetiier  I  will  or  no ;  let  me  have  what  business  I  will,  or  come  home 
ever  so  late,  or  be  ever  so  sleepy  :  but  it  is  an  old  saying  and  a  true  one,  '  Be 
you  lords  or  be  you  earls,  you  must  write  to  naughty  girls.'  I  was  to-day  at 
Court,  and  saw  Kaymond  [an  Irish  friend]  among  the  beefeaters,  staying  to 
see  the  Queen :  so  I  put  him  in  a  better  station,  made  two  or  three  dozen 
bows,  and  went  to  church,  and  then  to  Court  again  to  pick  up  a  dinner,  as  I 
did  with  Sir  John  Stanley  :  and  then  we  went  to  visit  Lord  Mountjoy,  and  just 
left  him ;  and  'tis  near  eleven  at  night,  young  women,  and  methinks  this  letter 
comes  very  near  to  the  bottom,  &c.  &c." 

Jan.  1,  1711.  Morning.  "  I  wish  my  dearest  pretty  Dingley  and  Stella  a 
happy  new  year,  and  health,  and  mirth,  and  good  stomachs,  and  Fr's  company. 
Faith,  I  did  not  know  how  to  write  Fr.  I  wondered  what  was  the  matter; 
but  now  I  remember  I  always  write  Pdfr  [by  this  combination  of  letters,  or 
by  the  word  Presto,  Swift  designates  himself  in  the  Journal]  *  *  Get  the 
Examiners,  and  read  them ;  the  last  nine  or  ten  are  full  of  reasons  for  the  late 
change  and  of  the  abuses  of  the  last  ministry ;  and  the  great  men  assure  me 
they  are  all  true.  They  were  written  by  their  encouragement  and  direction. 
I  must  rise,  and  go  see  Sir  Andrew  Fountain ;  but  perhaps  to-morrow  I  may 
answer  i/.i),'s  [Stella's  designation  in  the  Journal]  letter:  so  good  morrow, 
my  mistresses  all,  good  morrow.  I  wish  you  both  a  merry  new  year ;  roast 
beef,  minced  pies,  and  good  strong  beer ;  and  me  a  share  of  your  good  cheer ; 
that  I  was  there  or  you  were  here;  and  you're  a  little  saucy  dear,  &c.  &c." 

Jan.  13,  1711.  "0  faith,  I  had  an  ugly  giddy  fit  last  night  in  my  chamber, 
and  I  have  got  a  new  box  of  pills  to  take,  and  I  hope  shall  have  no  more  this 
good  while.  I  would  not  tell  you  before,  because  it  would  vex  you,  little 
rogues;  but  now  it  is  better.     I  dined  to-day  with  Lord  Shelbui'n,  &c.,  &c." 

Jan.  16,  1711.  "My  service  to  Mrs. Stode  and  Walls.  Has  shea  boy  or  a 
girl  ?  A  girl,  hmm  !,  and  died  in  a  week,  hmmm  !,  and  was  poor  Stella  forced 
to  stand  for  godmother  ? — Let  me  know  how  accounts  stand,  that  you  may 
have  your  money  betimes.  There's  four  months  for  my  lodging ;  that  must  be 
thought  on  too.  And  zoo  go  dine  with  Manley,  and  lose  your  money,  doo  ex- 
travagant sluttikin?  But  don't  fret.  It  will  just  be  three  weeks  when  I  have 
the  next  letter,  that  is,  to-morrow.  Farewell,  dearest  beloved  M.  D.,  and  love 
poor,  poor  Presto,  who  has  not  had.  one  happy  day,  since  he  left  you,  as  hope 
to  be  saved." 

March  7,  1711.  "  I  am  weary  of  business  and  ministers.  I  don't  go  to  a 
coffee-house  twice  a  month.  I  am  very  regular  in  going  to  sleep  before 
eleven.  And  so  you  say  that  Stella's  a  pretty  girl;  and  so  she  be;  and  me- 
thinks I  see  her  just  now,  as  handsome  as  the  day's  long.  Do  you  know 
what  ?  When  I  am  writing  in  our  language  [a  kind  of  baby-language  of  en- 
dearment used  between  him  and  Stella,  and  called  'the  little  language'] 
I  make  up  my  mouth  just  as  if  I  was  speaking  it.  I  caught  myself  at  it  just 
now.  *  *  Poor  Stella,  won't  Dingley  leave  her  a  little  daylight  to  write  to 
Presto  ?  Well,  well,  we'll  have  daylight  shortly,  spite  of  her  teeth ;  and  zoo 
must  cly  Zele,  and  Hele,  and  Hele  aden.  Must  loo  mimitate  Pdfr,  pay  ?  Iss, 
and  so  la  shall.  And  so  leles  fol  ee  rettle.  Dood  Mollow.  (You  must  cry 
There  and  Here  and  Here  again.  Must  you  imitate  Pdfr,  pray  ?  Yes,  and  so 
you  shall.    And  so  there  's  for  the  letter.     Good  morrow.)" 


DEAN   SWIFT.  155 

And  so  on,  through  a  series  of  daily  letters,  forming  now 
a  goodly  octavo  volume  or  more,  Swift  chats  and  rattles 
away  to  the  "  dear  absent  girls,"  giving  them  all  the  political 
gossip  of  the  time,  and  informing  them  about  his  own  goings- 
out  and  comings-in ;  his  dinings  with  Harley,  St.  John,  and 
occasionally  with  Addison  and  other  old  Whig  friends  ;  the 
state  of  his  health,  his  troubles  with  his  drunken  servant 
Patrick,  his  lodging-expenses,  and  a  host  of  other  things. 
Such  another  journal  has,  perhaps,  never  been  given  to  the 
world ;  and,  but  for  it,  we  should  never  have  known  what 
depths  of  tenderness,  and  power  of  affectionate  prattle,  there 
were  in  the  heart  of  this  harsh  and  savage  man.  Only  on 
one  topic,  affecting  himself  during  his  long  stay  in  London, 
is  he  in  any  degree  reserved.  Among  the  acquaintanceships 
he  had  formed  was  one  with  a  Mrs.  Vanhomrigh,  a  widowed 
lady  of  property,  who  had  a  family  of  several  daughters. 
The  eldest  of  these,  Hester  Vanhomrigh,  was  a  girl  of  more 
than  ordinary  talent  and  accomplishments,  and  of  enthusiastic 
and  impetuous  character ;  and  as  Swift  acquired  the  habit  of 
dropping  in  upon  the  ''Van.'-,''  as  he  called  them,  when  he 
had  no  other  dinner  engagement,  it  was  not  long  before  he 
and  Miss  Vanhomrigh  fell  into  the  relationship  of  teacher 
and  pupil.  He  taught  her  to  think,  and  to  write  verses ;  and 
as,  among  Swift's  other  peculiarities  of  opinion,  one  was  that 
he  entertained  what  would  even  now  be  called  very  advanced 
notions  as  to  the  intellectual  capabilities  and  rights  of  women, 
he  found  no  more  pleasant  amusement,  in  the  midst  of  his 
politics  and  other  business,  than  that  of  superintending  the 
growth  of  so  hopeful  a  mind. 

"  His  conduct  might  have  made  him  styled 
A  father,  and  the  nymph  his  child : 
The  innocent  delight  he  took 
To  see  the  virgin  mind  her  book 
Was  but  the  master's  secret  joy 
In  school  to  hear  the  finest  boy." 

But,  alas  !  Cupid  got  among  the  books. 

*'  Vanessa,  not  in  years  a  score, 
Dreams  of  a  gown  of  forty-four; 
Imaginaiy  charms  can  find 
In  eyes  with  reading  almost  blind; 
She  fancies  music  in  his  tongue, 
Nor  farther  looks,  but  thinks  him  young." 


156  DEAN  SWIFT. 

Nay,  more ;  one  of  Swift's  lessons  to  her  had  been  that 
frankness,  whether  in  man  or  woman,  was  one  of  the  chief 
of  the  virtues,  and 

"  That  common  forms  were  not  design'd 
Directors  to  a  noble  mind." 

^*  Then,"  said  the  nymph, 

"  I'll  let  you  see 
My  actions  with  your  rules  agree ; 
That  I  can  vulgar  forms  despise, 
And  have  no  secrets  to  disguise." 

She  told  her  love,  and  fairly  argued  it  out  with  the  startled 
tutor,  discussing  every  element  in  the  question,  whether  for 
or  against ;  the  disparity  of  their  ages,  her  own  five  thousand 
guineas,  their  similarity  of  tastes,  his  views  of  ambition,  the 
judgment  the  world  would  form  of  the  match,  and  so  on ; 
and  the  end  of  it  was  that  she  reasoned  so  well,  that  Swift 
could  not  but  admit  that  there  would  be  nothing  after  all  so 
very  incongruous  in  a  marriage  between  him  and  Esther 
Vanhomrigh.  So  the  matter  rested,  Swift  gently  resisting 
the  impetuosity  of  the  young  woman,  when  it  threatened  to 
take  him  by  storm,  but  not  having  the  courage  to  adduce  the 
real  and  conclusive  argument — the  existence  on  the  other 
side  of  the  channel  of  another  and  a  dearer  Esther.  Stella, 
on  her  side,  knew  that  Swift  visited  a  family  called  the 
*'Vans;"  she  divined  that  something  was  wrong;  but  that 
was  all. 

That  Swift,  the  Mentor  of  ministers,  their  daily  compa- 
nion, their  factotum,  at  whose  bidding  they  dispensed  their 
patronage  and  their  favour,  should  himself  be  suffered  to 
remain  a  mere  vicar  of  an  Irish  parish,  w^as,  of  course,  impos- 
sible. Vehement  and  even  boisterous  and  overdone  as  was 
his  zeal  for  his  own  independence — *'  If  we  let  these  great 
ministers  pretend  too  much,  there  will  be  no  governing 
them,"  was  his  maxim ;  and,  in  order  to  act  up  to  it,  he 
used  to  treat  Dukes  and  Earls  as  if  they  were  dogs — there 
were  yet  means  of  honourably  acknowledging  his  services  in 
a  way  to  which  he  would  have  taken  no  exception.  JSTor 
can  we  doubt  that  Oxford  and  St.  John,  who  were  really 


DEAN  SWIFT.  I57 

and  heartily  his  admirers,  were  anxious  to  promote  him  in 
some  suitable  manner.  An  English  bishopric  was  certainly 
what  he  coveted,  and  what  they  would  at  once  have  given 
him.  But  though  the  bishopric  of  Hereford  fell  vacant  in 
1712,  there  was,  as  Sir  Walter  Scott  says,  "  a  lion  in  the 
path."  Queen  Anne,  honest  dowdy  woman, — her  instinctive 
dislike  of  Swift  strengthened  by  the  private  influence  of  the 
Archbishop  of  York,  and  the  Duchess  of  Somerset,  whose 
red  hair  Swift  had  lampooned — obstinately  refused  to  make 
the  author  of  the  Tale  of  a  Tuh  a  bishop.  Even  an  English 
deanery  could  not  be  found  for  so  questionable  a  Christian  ; 
and  in  1713  Swift  was  obliged  to  accept,  as  the  best  thing 
he  could  get,  the  deanery  of  St.  Patrick's,  in  his  native  city 
of  Dublin.  He  hurried  over  to  Ireland  to  be  installed,  and 
came  back  just  in  time  to  partake  in  the  last  struggles  and 
dissensions  of  the  Tory  administration,  before  Queen  Anne's 
death.  By  his  personal  exertions  with  ministers,  and  his 
pamphlet  entitled  Puhltc  Spirit  of  the  WMgs,  he  tried  to 
buoy  up  the  sinking  Tory  cause.  But  the  Queen's  death 
destroyed  all ;  with  George  T  the  Whigs  came  in  again ;  the 
late  Tory  ministers  were  dispersed  and  disgraced,  and  Swift 
shared  their  fall.  "  Dean  Swift,"  says  Arbuthnot,  "  keeps 
up  his  noble  spirit ;  and,  though  like  a  man  knocked  down, 
you  may  behold  him  still  with  a  stern  countenance,  and 
aiming  a  blow  at  his  adversaries."  He  returned,  with  rage 
and  grief  in  his  heart,  to  Ireland,  a  disgraced  man,  and  in 
danger  of  arrest  on  account  of  his  connexion  with  the  late 
ministers.  Even  in  Dublin  he  was  insulted  as  he  walked  in 
the  streets. 

For  twelve  years,  that  is,  from  1714  to  1726,  Swift  did 
not  quit  Ireland.  At  his  first  coming,  as  he  tells  us  in  one 
of  his  letters,  he  was  ''horribly  melancholy;"  but  the 
melancholy  began  to  wear  off ;  and  having  made  up  his  mind 
to  his  exile  in  the  country  of  his  detestation,  he  fell  gradually 
into  the  routine  of  his  duties  as  Dean.  How  he  boarded 
in  a  private  family  in  the  town,  stipulating  for  leave  to 
invite  his  friends  to  dinner  at  so  much  a  head,  and  only 
having  two  evenings  a  week  at  the  deanery  for  larger  recep- 


158  DEAN   SWIFT. 

tions ;  how  he  brought  Stella  and  Mrs.  Dingley  from  Laracor, 
and  settled  them  in  lodgings  on  the  other  side  of  the  Liify, 
keeping  up  the  same  precautions  in  his  intercourse  with  them 
as  before,. but  devolving  the  management  of  his  receptions  at 
the  deanery  upon  Stella,  who  did  all  the  honours  of  the 
house ;  how  he  had  his  own  way  in  all  cathedral  business, 
and  had  always  a  few  clergymen  and  others  in  his  train, 
who  toadied  him,  and  took  part  in  the  facetious  horse-play  of 
which  he  was  fond  ;  how  gradually  his  physiognomy  became 
known  to  the  citizens,  and  his  eccentricities  familiar  to  them, 
till  the  **Dean"  became  the  lion  of  Dublin,  and  everybody 
turned  to  look  at  him  as  he  walked  in  the  streets;  how, 
among  the  Dean's  other  oddities,  he  was  popularly  charged 
with  stinginess  in  his  entertainments,  and  a  sharp  look-out 
after  the  wine ;  how  sometimes  he  would  fly  off  from  town, 
and  take  refuge  in  some  country-seat  of  a  friendly  Irish 
nobleman ;  how  all  this  while  he  was  reading  books  of  all 
kinds,  writing  notes  and  jottings,  and  corresponding  with 
Pope,  Gay,  Prior,  Arbuthnot,  Oxford^  Bolingbroke,  and 
other  literary  and  political  friends  in  London  or  abroad — 
are  matters  in  the  recollection  of  all  who  have  read  any  of 
the  biographies  of  Swift.  It  is  also  known  that  it  was 
during  this  period  that  the  Stella-and- Vanessa  imbroglio 
reached  its  highest  degree  of  entanglement.  Scarcely  had 
the  Dean  located  Stella  and  Mrs.  Dingley  in  their  lodging  in 
Dublin,  when,  as  he  had  feared,  the  impetuous  Vanessa 
crossed  the  channel  to  be  near  him  too.  Her  mother's 
death,  and  the  fact  that  she  and  her  younger  sister  had  a 
small  property  in  Ireland,  were  pretext  enough.  A  scrap  or 
two  from  surviving  letters  will  tell  the  sequel,  and  will 
suggest  the  state  of  the  relation^  at  this  time  between  Swift 
and  this  unhappy,  and  certainly  very  extraordinary  woman : — 

Swift  to  Miss  Vanhomrigh :  London,  Aug.  12,  1714.  "  I  had  your  letter  last 
post,  and  before  you  can  send  me  another  I  shall  set  out  for  Ireland.  *  *  * 
If  you  are  in  Ireland  when  I  am  there,  I  shall  see  you  very  seldom.  It  is  not 
a  place  for  any  freedom,  but  where  everything  is  known  in  a  week,  and  magni- 
fied a  hundred  degrees.  These  are  rigorous  laws  that  must  be  passed  through; 
but  it  is  probable  we  may  meet  in  London  in  winter  :  or,  if  not,  leave  all  to 
fate."  *  *  * 

Miss  Vanhomrigh  to  Swift:  Dublin,  1714  {some  time  after  August).  "You 
once  had  a  maxim,  which  was  to  act  what  was  right,  and  not  mind  what  the 


DEAN  SWIFT.  159 

world  would  say.  I  wish  you  would  keep  to  it  now.  Pray,  what  can  be 
wrong  in  seeing  and  advising  an  unhappy  young  woman  ?  I  cannot  imagine. 
You  cannot  but  know  that  your  frowns  make  my  life  unsupportable.  You 
have  taught  me  to  distinguish,  and  then  you  leave  me  miserable."  *  *  * 

Miss  Vanhomrigh  to  Swift:  Dublin,  1714.  "You  bid  me  be  easy,  and  you 
would  see  me  as  often  as  you  could.  You  had  better  have  said  as  often  as 
you  could  get  the  better  of  your  inclinations  so  much,  or  as  often  as  you 
remembered  there  was  such  a  one  in  the  world.  If  you  continue  to  treat  me 
as  you  do,  you  will  not  be  made  uneasy  by  me  long.  It  is  impossible  to 
describe  what  I  have  suffered  since  I  saw  you  last.  I  am  sure  1  could  have 
bore  the  rack  much  better  than  those  killing,  killing  words  of  yours.  Some- 
times I  have  resolved  to  die  without  seeing  yoxi  more;  but  those  resolves,  to 
your  misfortune,  did  not  last  long ;  for  there  is  something  in  human  nature 
that  prompts  one  to  find  relief  in  this  world.  I  must  give  way  to  it,  and  beg 
you'd  see  me,  and  speak  kindly  to  me;  for  I  am  sure  you'd  not  condemn  any 
one  to  suffer  what  I  have  done,  could  you  but  know  it.  The  reason  I  write 
to  you  is,  because  I  cannot  tell  it  to  you  should  I  see  you.  For  when  I  begin 
to  complain,  then  you  are  angry ;  and  there  is  something  in  your  looks  so 
awful,  that  it  strikes  me  dumb."  *  *  * 

Here  a  gap  intervenes,  whicli  record  fills  up  with  but  an 
indication  here  and  there.  Swift  saw  Vanessa,  sometimes 
with  that  "  something  awful  in  his  looks  which  struck  her 
dumb,"  sometimes  with  words  of  perplexed  kindness ;  he  per- 
suaded her  to  go  out,  to  read,  to  amuse  herself;  he  introduced 
clergymen  to  her  —  one  of  them  afterwards  Archbishop  of 
Cashel — as  suitors  for  her  hand;  he  induced  her  to  leave 
Dublin,  and  go  to  her  property  at  Selbridge,  about  twelve 
miles  from  Dublin,  where  now  and  then  he  went  to  visit  her, 
where  she  used  to  plant  laurels  against  every  time  of  his 
coming,  and  where  "  Vanessa's  bower,^^  in  which  she  and  the 
Dean  used  to  sit,  with  books  and  writing  materials  before 
them,  during  those  happy  visits,  was  long  an  object  of  interest 
to  tourists ;  he  wrote  kindly  letters  to  her,  some  in  French, 
praising  her  talents,  her  conversation,  and  her  writing,  and 
saying  that  he  found  in  her  "  tout  ce  que  la  nature  a  donnee  a 
un  mortel " — "  Vlionneur,   la   vertu,   le  hon  sens,    V esprit,    la 

uceur,  Vagrement  et  la  fermete  Warner  All  did  not  suffice ; 
and  one  has  to  fancy,  during  these  long  years,  the  restless 
beatings,  on  the  one  hand,  of  that  impassioned  woman^s  heart, 
now  lying  as  cold,  undistinguishable  ashes  in  some  Irish 
grave ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  distraction,  and  anger,  and 
daily  terror  of  the  man  she  clung  to.  For,  somehow  or  other, 
there  was  an  element  of  terror  mingled  with  the  affair.  Wha 
it  was,  is  beyond  easy  scrutiny ;  though  possibly  the  data 


160  DEAN  SWIFT. 

exist,  if  they  were  well  sifted.  The  ordinary  story  is  that 
some  time  in  the  midst  of  these  entanglements  with  Vanessa, 
and  in  consequence  of  their  effects  on  the  rival-relationship — 
Stella  having  been  brought  almost  to  death's  door  by  the 
anxieties  caused  her  by  Vanessa's  proximity,  and  by  her  own 
equivocal  position  in  society — the  form  of  marriage  was  gone 
tlirough  by  Swift  and  Stella,  and  they  became  legally  hus- 
band and  wife,  although  with  an  engagement  that  the  matter 
should  remain  secret,  and  that  there  should  be  no  change  in 
their  manner  of  living.  The  year  1716,  when  Swift  was  forty- 
nine  years  of  age,  and  Stella  thirty-two,  is  assigned  as  the 
date  of  this  event ;  and  the  ceremony  is  said  to  have  been  per- 
formed in  the  garden  of  the  deanery  by  the  Bishop  of  Clogher. 
But  more  mystery  remains.  "  Immediately  subsequent  to  the 
ceremony,"  says  Sir  Walter  Scott,  *'  Swift's  state  of  mind 
appears  to  have  been  dreadful.  Delany  (as  I  have  learned 
from  a  friend  of  his  widow)  said  that  about  the  time  it 
was  supposed  to  have  taken  place  he  observed  Swift  to  be 
extremely  gloomy  and  agitated ;  so  much  so,  that  he  went  to 
Archbishop  King  to  mention  his  apprehensions.  On  entering 
the  library  Swift  rushed  out  with  a  countenance  of  distraction, 
and  passed  him  without  speaking.  He  found  the  archbishop 
in  tears ;  and,  upon  asking  the  reason,  he  said,  '  You  have  just 
met  the  most  unhappy  man  on  earth ;  but  on  the  subject  of 
his  wretchedness  you  must  never  ask  a  question.' "  What 
are  we  to  make  of  this  ?  Nay  more,  what  are  we  to  make  of 
it,  when  we  find  that  the  alleged  marriage  of  Swift  with  Stella, 
with  which  Scott  connects  the  story,  is  after  all  denied  by 
some  as  resting  on  no  sufficient  evidence ;  even  Dr.  Delany, 
though  he  believed  in  the  marriage,  and  supposed  it  to  have 
taken  place  about  the  time  of  this  remarkable  interview  with 
the  archbishop,  having  no  certain  information  on  the  subject  ? 
If  we  assume  a  secret  marriage  with  Stella,  indeed,  the  sub- 
sequent portion  of  the  Vanessa  story  becomes  more  explicable. 
On  this  assumption  we  are  to  imagine  Swift  continuing  his 
letters  to  Vanessa,  and  his  occasional  visits  to  her  at  Selbridge 
on  the  old  footing  for  some  years  after  the  marriage,  with  the 
undivulged  secret  ever  in  his  mind,  increasing  tenfold  his 


DEAN   SWIFT.  161 

former  awkwardness  in  encountering  her  presence.  And  so 
we  come  to  the  year  1720,  when,  as  the  following  scraps  will 
show,  a  new  paroxysm  on  the  part  of  Vanessa  brought  on 
a  new  crisis  in  their  relations. 

Miss  Vanhomrigh  to  Swift:  Selhridge,  1720.  "Believe  me,  it  is  with  the 
utmost  regret  that  I  now  write  to  you,  because  I  know  your  good-nature  such 
that  you  cannot  see  any  human  creature  miserable  without  being  sensibly 
touched.  Yet  what  can  I  do  ?  I  must  either  unload  my  heart,  and  tell  you 
all  its  griefs,  or  sink  under  the  inexpressible  distress  I  now  suffer  by  your 
prodigious  neglect  of  me.  It  is  now  ten  long  weeks  since  I  saw  you,  and  in 
all  that  time  1  have  never  received  but  one  letter  from  you,  and  a  little  note 
with  an  excuse.  Oh,  have  you  forgot  me  ?  You  endeavour  by  severities  to 
force  me  from  you.  Nor  can  I  blame  you ;  for  with  the  utmost  distress  and 
confusion  I  behold  myself  the  cause  of  uneasy  reflections  to  you.  Yet  I  can- 
not comfort  you,  but  here  declare  that  it  is  not  in  the  power  of  art,  time,  or 

accident,  to  lessen  the  inexpressible  passion  I  have  for .     Put  my  passion 

under  the  utmost  restraint,  send  me  as  distant  from  you  as  the  earth  will 
allow ;  yet  you  cannot  banish  those  charming  ideas  which  will  ever  stick  by 
me  whilst  I  have  the  use  of  memory.  Nor  is  the  love  I  bear  you  only  seated 
in  my  soul :  for  there  is  not  a  single  atom  of  my  frame  that  is  not  blended 
with  it.  Therefore  do  not  flatter  yourself  that  separation  will  ever  change 
my  sentiments;  for  I  find  myself  unquiet  in  the  midst  of  silence,  and  my  heart 
is  at  once  pierced  with  sorrow  and  love.  For  Heaven's  sake,  tell  me  what  has 
caused  this  prodigious  change  in  you  which  I  have  found  of  late."  *  *  * 

Miss  Vanhomrigh  to  Swift:  Dublin,  1720.  *  *  '<  I  believe  you  thought  I 
only  rallied  when  I  told  you  the  other  night  that  I  wovild  pester  you  with 
letters.  Once  more  I  advise  you,  if  you  have  any  regard  for  your  quiet,  to 
alter  your  behaviour  quickly;  for  I  do  assure  you  I  have  too  much  spirit  to 
sit  down  contented  with  this  treatment.  Because  I  love  frankness  extremely, 
I  here  tell  you  now  that  I  have  determined  to  try  all  manner  of  human  arts  to 
reclaim  you ;  and  if  all  these  fail,  I  am  resolved  to  have  recourse  to  the  black 
one,  which,  it  is  said,  never  does.  Now  see  what  inconveniency  you  will  bring 
both  yourself  and  me  unto  *  *.  When  I  undertake  a  thing,  I  don't  love  to  do 
it  by  halves." 

Swift  to  Miss  Vanhomrigh  :  Dublin,  1720.  "  If  you  write  as  you  do,  I  shall 
come  the  seldomer  on  purpose  to  be  pleased  with  your  letters,  which  I  never 
look  into  without  wondering  how  a  brat  that  cannot  read  can  possibly  write 
so  well.  *  *  Raillery  apart,  I  thmk  it  inconvenient,  for  a  hundred  reasons, 
that  I  should  make  your  house  a  sort  of  constant  dwelling-place,  I  will  cer- 
tainly come  as  often  as  I  conveniently  can ;  but  my  health  and  the  perpetual 
run  of  ill  weather  hinder  me  from  going  out  in  the  morning,  and  my  after- 
noons are  taken  up  I  know  not  how ;  so  that  I  am  in  rebellion  with  a  hundred 
people  besides  yourself  for  not  seeing  them.  For  the  rest,  you  need  make  use 
of  no  other  black  art  besides  your  ink.  It  is  a  pity  your  eyes  are  not  black, 
or  I  would  have  said  the  same ;  but  you  are  a  white  witch,  and  can  do  no 
mischief."  *  *  * 

Sivift  to  Miss  Vanhomrigh :  Dublin,  1720.  "  I  received  your  letter  when 
some  company  was  with  me  on  Saturday  night,  and  it  put  me  in  such  con- 
fusion that  I  could  not  tell  what  to  do.  This  morning  a  woman  who  does 
business  for  me,  told  me  she  heard  I  was  in  love  with  one,  naming  you,  aud 

twenty  particulars;  that  little   master  and  I  visited  you,  and  that  the 

Archbishop  did  so ;  and  that  you  had  abundance  of  wit,  &c.  I  ever  feared  the 
tattle  of  this  nasty  town,  and  told  you  so  ;  and  that  was  the  reason  why  I  said 
to  you  long  ago  that  I  would  see  you  seldom  when  you  were  in  Ireland ;  and 
I  must  beg  you  to  be  easy,  if,  for  some  time,  I  visit  you  seldomer,  and  not  in 
so  particular  a  manner."   *  *  * 

M 


162  DEAN   SWIFT. 

Miss  Varihcynirigh  to  Swift:  Selbridge,  1720.  *  *  "  Solitude  is  unsupportable 
to  a  mind  which  is  not  easy.     I  have  worn  oiit  my  days  in  sighing  and  my 

nights  in  watching  and  thinking  of ,  who  thinks  not  of  me.     How  many 

letters  shall  I  send  you  before  I  receive  an  answer  ?  *  *  Oh  that  I  could 
hope  to  see  you  here,  or  that  I  covild  go  to  you  !  I  was  born  with  violent 
passions,  which  terminate  all  in  one— that  inexpressible  passion  I  have  for 
you.  *  *  Surely  you  cannot  possibly  be  so  taken  up,  but  you  might  command 
a  moment  to  write  to  me,  and  force  your  inclinations  to  so  great  a  charity. 
I  firmly  believe,  if  I  could  know  your  thoughts  (which  no  human  creatvire  is 
capable  of  guessing  at,  because  never  anyone  living  thought  like  you),  I  should 
find  you  had  often  in  a  rage  wished  me  religious,  hoping  then  I  should  have 
paid  my  devotions  to  Heaven.  But  that  would  not  spare  you ;  for  were  I  an 
enthusiast,  still  you'd  be  the  deity  I  should  worship.  What  marks  are  there 
of  a  deity,  but  what  you  are  to  be  known  by  ?  You  are  present  everywhere  ; 
your  dear  image  is  always  before  my  eyes.  Sometimes  you  strike  me  with 
that  prodigious  awe,  I  tremble  with  fear ;  at  other  times  a  charming  com- 
passion shines  through  your  countenance,  which  revives  my  soul.  Is  it 
not  more  reasonable  to  adore  a  radiant  form  one  has  seen  than  one  only 
described?" 

Smfi  to  Miss  Vanhomrigh :  Dublin,  October  15,  1720.  "  All  the  morning  I 
am  plagued  with  impertinent  visits,  below  any  man  of  sense  or  honour  to 
endure,  if  it  were  any  way  avoidable.  Afternoons  and  evenings  are  spent 
abroad  in  walking  to  keep  off  and  avoid  spleen  as  far  as  I  can ;  so  that  when 
1  am  not  so  good  a  correspondent  as  I  could  wish,  you  are  not  to  quarrel  and 
be  governor,  but  to  impute  it  to  my  situation,  and  to  conclude  infallibly  that 
I  have  the  same  respect  and  kindness  for  you  I  ever  professed  to  have."  *  * 

Swift  to  Miss  Vanhomrigh:  Gallstoun,  July  5,  1721.  *  *  "  Settle  your  affairs, 
and  quit  this  scoundrel-island,  and  things  will  be  as  you  desire.  I  can  say  no 
more,  being  called  away.  Mais  soyez  assuree  que  jamais  personne  au  monde  vHa, 
6te  aim4e,  hpnorie,  estimee,  adoreepar  voire  ami  que  vous." 

Vanessa  did  not  quit  the  "  scoundrel-island ;  ^^  but,  on  the 
contrary,  remained  in  it,  unmanageable  as  ever.  In  1722, 
about  a  year  after  the  date  of  the  last  scrap,  the  catastrophe 
came.  In  a  wild  fit  Vanessa,  as  the  story  is,  took  the  bold 
step  of  writing  to  Stella,  insisting  on  an  explanation  of  the 
nature  of  Swift's  engagements  to  her ;  Stella  placed  the  letter 
in  Swift's  hands ;  and  Swift,  in  a  paroxysm  of  fury,  rode 
instantly  to  Selbridge,  saw  Vanesssa  without  speaking,  laid 
a  letter  on  her  table,  and  rode  off  again.  The  letter  was 
Vanessa's  death-warrant.  Within  a  few  weeks  she  was  dead, 
having  previously  revoked  a  will  in  which  she  had  bequeathed 
all  her  fortune  to  Swift. 

Whatever  may  have  been  the  purport  of  Vanessa's  commu- 
nication to  Stella,  it  produced  no  change  in  Swift's  relations 
to  the  latter.  The  pale  pensive  face  of  Hester  Johnson,  with 
her  *'  fine  dark  eyes  "  and  hair  "  black  as  a  raven,"  was  still 
to  be  seen  on  reception-evenings  at  the  deanery,  where  also 
she  and  Mrs.  Dingley  would  sometimes  take  up  their  abode, 


DEAN  SWIFT.  163 

when  Swift  was  suffering  from  one  of  his  attacks  of  vertigo, 
and  required  to  be  nursed.  Nay,  during  those  very  years  in 
which,  as  we  have  just  seen,  Swift  was  attending  to  the  move- 
ments to  and  fro  of  the  more  imperious  Vanessa  in  the  back- 
ground, and  assuaging  her  passion  by  visits  and  letters^  and 
praises  of  her  powers,  and  professions  of  his  admiration  of  her 
beyond  all  her  sex,  he  was  all  the  while  keeping  up  the  same 
affectionate  style  of  intercom'se  as  ever  with  the  more  gentle 
Stella,  whose  happier  lot  it  was  to  be  stationed  in  the  centre 
of  his  domestic  circle,  and  addressing  to  her,  in  a  less  forced 
manner,  praises  singularly  like  those  he  addressed  to  her 
rival.  Thus,  every  year,  on  Stella's  birth -day,  he  wrote  a 
little  poem  in  honour  of  the  occasion.  Take  the  one  for  1718, 
beginning  thus : — 

"  Stella  this  day  is  thirty-four, 
(We  sha'n't  dispute  a  year  or  more :) 
However,  Stella,  be  not  troubled ; 
Although  thy  size  and  years  be  doubled, 
Since  first  I  saw  thee  at  sixteen, 
The  brightest  virgin  on  the  green, 
So  little  is  thy  form  declined ; 
Made  up  so  largely  in  thy  mind." 

Stella  would  reciprocate  these  compliments  by  verses  on  the 
Dean's  birth-day ;  and  one  is  struck  with  the  similarity  of  her 
acknowledgments  of  what  the  Dean  had  taught  her  and  done 
for  her,  to  those  of  Vanessa.     Thus,  in  1721, — 

"  When  men  began  to  call  me  fair, 
You  interposed  your  timely  care ; 
You  early  taught  me  to  despise 
The  ogling  of  a  coxcomb's  eyes ; 
Show'd  where  my  judgment  was  misplaced, 
Refined  my  fancy  and  my  taste. 
You  taught  how  I  might  youth  prolong 
By  knowing  what  was  right  and  wrong ; 
How  from  my  heart  to  bring  supplies 
Of  lustre  to  my  fading  eyes ; 
How  soon  a  beauteous  mind  repairs 
The  loss  of  changed  or  falling  hairs; 
How  wit  and  virtue  from  within 
Send  out  a  smoothness  o'er  the  skin, 
*■  Your  lectures  could  my  fancy  fix, 

And  I  can  please  at  thirty-six." 

The  death  of  Vanessa,  in  1722,  left  Swift  from  that  time 
entirely  Stella's.  How  she  got  over  the  Vanessa  affair  in  her 
own  mind,  when  the  full  extent  of  the  facts  became  known  to 

M  2 


164  DEAN   SWIFT. 

lier,  can  only  be  guessed.  When  some  one  alluded  to  the  fact 
that  Swift  had  written  beautifully  about  Vanessa,  she  is  re- 
ported to  have  said,  "  That  doesn't  signify,  for  we  all  know 
the  Dean  could  write  beautifully  about  a  broomstick.^'  "  A 
woman,  a  true  woman !  "  is  Mr.  Thackeray's  characteristic 
comment. 

To  the  world's  end,  those  who  take  interest  in  Swift's  life 
will  range  themselves  either  on  the  side  of  Stella  or  on  that  of 
Vanessa.  Mr.  Thackeray  prefers  Stella,  but  admits  that  in 
doing  so,  though  the  majority  of  men  may  be  on  his  side,  he 
will  have  most  women  against  him.  Which  way  Swift's  heart 
inclined  him,  it  is  not  difficult  to  see.  Stella  was  the  main 
influence  of  his  life ;  the  intimacy  with  Vanessa  was  but  an 
episode.  And  yet  when  he  speaks  of  the  two  women  as  a 
critic,  there  is  a  curious  equality  in  his  appreciation  of  them. 
Of  Stella  he  used  to  say  that  her  wit  and  judgment  were  such, 
that  "  she  never  failed  to  say  the  best  thing  that  was  said 
wherever  she  was  in  company;"  and  one  of  his  epistolary 
compliments  to  Vanessa  is  that  he  had  "  always  remarked  that, 
neither  in  general  nor  in  particular  conversation,  had  any 
word  ever  escaped  her  lips  that  could  by  possibility  have 
been  better."  Some  little  differences  in  his  preceptorial 
treatment  of  them  may  be  discerned,  as,  for  example,  when  he 
finds  it  necessary  to  admonish  poor  Stella  for  her  incorrigible 
bad  spelling — no  such  admonition,  apparently,  being  required 
for  Vanessa ;  or  when,  in  praising  Stella,  he  dwells  chiefly  on 
her  honour  and  gentle  kindliness,  whereas  in  praising  Vanessa 
he  dwells  chiefly  on  her  genius  and  force  of  mind.  But  it 
is  distinctly  on  record  that  his  regard  for  both  was  founded 
on  his  belief  that  in  respect  of  intellectual  habits  and  culture 
both  were  above  the  contemporary  standard  of  their  sex.  And 
here  let  us  repeat  that,  not  only  from  the  evidence  afforded  by 
the  whole  story  of  Swift's  relations  to  these  two  women,  but 
also  from  the  evidence  of  distinct  doctrinal  passages  scattered 
through  his  works,  it  is  plain  that  those  who  in  the  present 
day,  both  in  this  country  and  in  America,  maintain  the  intel- 
lectual equality  of  the  two  sexes,  and  the  right  of  women  to 
as  full  and  varied  an  education,  and  as  free  a  social  use  of 


DEAN   SWIFT.  165 

their  powers,  as  Is  allowed  to  men,  may  claim  Swift  a  pioneer 
in  their  cause.  Both  Stella  and  Vanessa  have  left  their  testi- 
mony that  from  the  very  first  Swift  took  care  to  indoctrinate 
them  with  peculiar  views  on  this  subject ;  and  both  thank 
him  for  having  done  so.  Stella  even  goes  further,  and  almost 
urges  Swift  to  do  on  the  great  scale  what  he  had  done  for 
her  individually : — 

"  0,  turn  your  precepts  into  laws, 
Redeem  the  woman's  ruin'd  cause ; 
Retrieve  lost  empire  to  our  sex, 
That  men  may  bow  their  rebel  necks." 

This  fact  that  Swift  had  a  theory  on  the  subject  of  the 
proper  mode  of  treating  and  educating  women,  which  theory 
was  in  antagonism  to  the  ideas  of  his  time,  explains  much  both 
in  his  conduct  as  a  man  and  in  his  habits  as  a  writer. 

For  the  first  six  years  of  his  exile  in  Ireland  after  the  death 
of  Queen  Anne,  Swift  had  published  nothing  of  any  conse- 
quence, and  had  kept  aloof  from  politics,  except  when  they 
were  brought  to  his  door  by  local  quarrels.  In  1720,  how- 
ever, he  again  flashed  forth  as  a  political  luminary,  in  a  cha- 
racter that  could  hardly  have  been  anticipated — that  of  an 
Irish  patriot.  Taking  up  the  cause  of  the  "  scoundrel-island," 
to  which  he  belonged  by  birth,  if  not  by  afiection,  and  to 
which  fate  had  consigned  him,  in  spite  of  all  his  efi'orts,  he 
made  that  cause  his  own;  virtually  said  to  his  old  Whig 
enemies  then  in  power  on  the  other  side  of  the  water,  "  Yes^ 
I  am  an  Irishman,  and  I  will  show  you  what  an  Irishman 
is  ;"  and,  constituting  himself  the  representative  of  the  island, 
hurled  it,  with  all  its  pent-up  mass  of  rage  and  wrongs,  against 
Walpole  and  his  administration.  First,  in  revenge  for  the 
commercial  wrongs  of  Ireland,  came  his  Proposal  for  the  Uni- 
versal Use  of  Irish  Manufactures,  utterly  Rejecting  and 
Renouncing  Everything  Wearable  that  comes  from  England'; 
then,  amidst  the  uproar  and  danger  excited  by  this  proposal, 
other  and  other  defiances  in  the  same  tone;  and  lastly,  in 
1723,  on  the  occasion  of  the  royal  patent  to  poor  William 
Wood  to  supply  Ireland,  without  her  own  consent,  with 
a  hundred  and  eight  thousand  pounds'  worth  of  copper  half- 


166  DEAN  SWIFT. 

pence  of  English  manufacture,  tlie  unparalleled  Drapiers 
Letters,  which  blasted  the  character  of  the  coppers  and  asserted 
the  nationality  of  Ireland.  All  Ireland,  Catholic  as  well  as 
Protestant,  blessed  the  Dean  of  St.  Patrick's;  associations 
were  formed  for  the  defence  of  his  person ;  and  had  Walpole 
and  his  Whigs  succeeded  in  bringing  him  to  trial,  it  would 
have  been  at  the  expense  of  an  Irish  rebellion.  From  that 
time  till  his  death  Swift  was  the  true  King  of  Ireland ;  only 
when  O'Connell  arose  did  the  heart  of  the  nation  yield  equal 
veneration  to  any  single  chief;  and  even  at  this  day  the 
grateful  Irish,  forgetting  his  gibes  against  them,  and  for- 
getting his  continual  habit  of  distinguishing  between  the 
Irish  population  as  a  whole  and  the  English  and  Protestant 
part  of  it  to  which  he  belonged  himself,  cherish  his  memory 
with  loving  enthusiasm,  and  speak  of  him  as  the  "  great 
Irishman.^'  Among  the  phases  of  Swift's  life,  this  of  his 
having  been  an  Irish  patriot  and  agitator  deserves  to  be  par- 
ticularly remembered. 

In  the  year  1726,  Swift,  then  in  his  sixtieth  year,  and  in 
the  full  flush  of  his  new  popularity  as  the  champion  of  Irish 
nationality,  visited  England  for  the  first  time  since  Queen 
Anne's  death.  Once  there,  he  was  loth  to  retui-n ;  and  a  con- 
siderable portion  of  the  years  1726  and  1727  was  spent  by 
him  in  or  near  London.  This  was  the  time  of  the  publication 
of  Gulliver  s  Travels,  which  had  been  written  some  years 
before,  and  also  of  some  Miscellanies,  which  were  edited  for 
him  by  Pope.  It  was  at  Pope's  villa  at  Twickenham  that  most 
of  his  time  was  spent ;  and  it  was  there  and  at  this  time  that 
the  long  friendship  between  Swift  and  Pope  ripened  into  that 
extreme  and  affectionate  intimacy  which  they  both  loved  to 
acknowledge.  Gay,  Arbuthnot,  and  Bolingbroke,  now  re- 
tamed  from  exile,  joined  Pope  in  welcoming  their  friend. 
Addison  had  been  dead  several  years.  Prior  was  dead,  and 
also  Yanbrugh  and  Parnell.  Steele  was  yet  alive ;  but 
between  him  and  Swift  there  was  no  longer  any  tie.  Poli- 
tical and  aristocratic  acquaintances,  old  and  new,  there  were  in 
abundance,  all  anxious  once  again  to  have  Swift  among  them 
to  fight  their  battles.     Old  George  I.   had  not  long  to  live. 


DEAN   SWIFT.  IQj 

and  the  Tories  were  trying  again  to  come  into  power  in  the 
train  of  the  Prince  of  Wales.  There  were  even  chances  of 
an  aiTangement  with  Walpole,  with  possibilities,  in  that  or  in 
some  other  way,  that  Swift  should  not  die  a  mere  Irish  dean. 
These  prospects  were  but  temporaiy.  The  old  King  died  ; 
and  contrary  to  expectation,  George  II.  retained  Walpole  and 
his  Whig  colleagues.  In  October,  1727,  Swift  left  England 
for  the  last  time.  He  returned  to  Dublin  just  in  time  to 
watch  over  the  death-bed  of  Stella,  who  expired,  after  a 
lingering  illness,  in  January,  1728.  Swift  was  then  in  his 
sixty-second  year. 

The  story  of  the  remaining  seventeen  years  of  Swift's  life— 
for,  with  all  his  maladies,  bodily  and  mental,  his  strong  frame 
withstood,  for  all  that  time  of  solitude  and  gloom,  the  wear  of 
mortality — is  perhaps  better  known  than  any  other  part  of 
his  biography.  How  his  irritability  and  eccentricities  and 
avarice  grew  upon  him,  so  that  his  friends  and  servants  had  a 
hard  task  in  humouring  him,  we  learn  from  the  traditions  of 
others ;  how  his  memory  began  to  fail,  and  other  signs  of 
breaking  up  began  to  appear,  we  learn  from  himself : — 

"  See  how  the  Dean  begins  to  break  ! 
Poor  gentleman,  he  droops  apace  ; 
You  plainly  find  it  in  his  face. 
,    That  old  vertigo  in  his  head 

Will  never  leave  him  till  he's  dead. 
Besides,  his  memory  decays ; 
He  recollects  not-  what  he  says ; 
He  cannot  call  his  friends  to  mind, 
Forgets  the  place  where  last  he  dined ; 
Plies  you  with  stories  o'er  and  o'er  ; 
He  told  them  fifty  times  before." 

The  fire  of  his  genius,  however,  was  not  yet  burnt  out. 
Between  1729  and  1736  he  continued  to  throw  out  satires 
and  lampoons  in  profusion,  referring  to  the  men  and  topics  of 
the  day,  and  particularly  to  the  political  affairs  of  Ireland ; 
and  it  was  during  this  time  that  his  Directions  to  Servants,  his 
Polite  Conversation,  and  other  well-known  facetiae,  first  saw  the 
light.  From  the  year  1736,  however,  it  was  well  known  in 
Dublin  that  the  Dean  was  no  more  what  he  had  been,  and  that 
his  recovery  was  not  to  be  looked  for.  The  rest  will  be  best 
told  in  the  words  of  Sir  Walter  Scott : — 


168  DEAN    SWIFT. 

"  The  last  scene  was  now  rapidly  approaching,  and  the  stage  darkened  ere 
the  curtain  fell.  From  1736  onward  the  Dean's  fits  of  periodical  giddiness 
and  deafness  had  returned  with  violence ;  he  could  neither  enjoy  conversation 
nor  amuse  himself  with  writing,  and  an  obstinate  resolution  which  he  had 
formed  not  to  wear  glasses,  prevented  him  from  reading.  The  following  dis- 
mal letter  to  Mrs.  Whiteway  [his  cousin,  and  chief  attendant  in  his  last  days] 
in  1740,  is  almost  the  last  document  which  we  possess  of  the  celebrated  Swift 
as  a  i-ational  and  reflecting  being.  It  awfully  foretells  the  catastrophe  which 
shortly  after  took  place. 

•  I  have  been  very  miserable  all  night,  and  to-day  extremely  deaf  and  full  of 
pain.  I  am  so  stupid  and  confounded,  that  I  cannot  express  the  mortification 
I  am  under  both  in  body  and  mind.  All  I  can  say  is  that  I  am  not  in  torture; 
but  I  daily  and  hourly  expect  it.  Pray  let  me  know  how  your  health  is  and 
your  family.  I  hardly  understand  one  word  I  write.  I  am  sure  my  days  will 
be  very  few ;  few  and  miserable  they  must  be. 

*  I  am,  for  these  few  days, 

'Yours  entirely, 

'  J.  Swift.' 

*  If  I  do  not  blunder,  it  is  Saturday,  July  26,  1740.' 

"  His  understanding  having  totally  failed  soon  after  these  melancholy  ex- 
pressions of  grief  and  affection,  his  first  state  was  that  of  violent  and  furious 
lunacy.  His  estate  was  put  under  the  management  of  trustees,  and  his  person 
confided  to  the  care  of  Dr.  Lyons,  a  respectable  clergyman,  curate  to  the  Rev. 
Robert  King,  prebendary  of  Dunlavin,  one  of  Swift's  executors.  This  gentle- 
man discharged  his  melancholy  task  with  great  fidelity,  being  much  and 
gratefully  attached  to  the  object  of  his  care.  From  a  state  of  outrageous 
frenzy,  aggravated  by  severe  bodily  suffering,  the  illustrious  Dean  of  St. 
Patrick's  sank  into  the  situation  of  a  helpless  changeling.  In  the  course  of 
about  three  years  he  is  only  known  to  have  spoken  once  or  twice.  At  length, 
when  this  awful  moral  lesson  had  subsisted  from  1743  until  the  19th  of  Oc- 
tober, 1745,  it  pleased  God  to  release  him  from  this  calamitous  situation. 
He  died  upon  that  day  without  a  single  pang,  so  gently  that  his  attendants 
were  scarce  aware  of  the  moment  of  his  dissolution." 

Swift  was  seventy-eight  years  of  age  at  tlie  time  of  his 
death,  having  outlived  all  his  contemporaries  of  the  Qaeen 
Anne  cluster  of  wits,  with  the  exception  of  Bolinghroke, 
Ambrose  Philips,  and  Gibber.  Congreve  had  died  in  1 729 ; 
Steele  in  the  same  year;  Defoe,  in  1731;  Gay,  in  1732; 
Arbuthnot,  in  1735;  Tickell,  in  1740;  and  Pope,  who  was 
Swift's  junior  by  twenty-one  years,  in  1744.  Swift,  there- 
fore, is  entitled  in  our  literary  histories  to  the  place  of  pat- 
riarch as  well  as  to  that  of  chief  among  the  wits  of  Queen 
Anne's  reign;  and  he  stands  nearest  to  our  own  day  of  any  of 
them  whose  writings  we  still  read.  As  late  as  the  year  1820 
a  person  was  alive  who  had  seen  Swift  as  he  lay  dead  in  the 
deanery  before  his  burial,  great  crowds  going  to  take  their 
last  look  of  him.  '^The  coffin  was  open;  he  had  on  his  head 
neither  cap  nor  wig ;  there  was  not  much  hair  on  the  front  or 
very  top,  but  it  was  long  and  thick  behind,  very  white,  and 


DEAN   SWIFT.  169 

was  like  flax  upon  the  pillow."  Such  is  the  last  glimpse  we 
have  of  Swift  on  earth.  Exactly  ninety  years  afterwards  the 
coffin  was  taken  up  from  its  resting-place  in  the  aisle  of  the 
cathedral;  and  the  skull  of  Swift,  the  white  locks  now  all 
mouldered  away  from  it,  became  an  object  of  scientific  curiosity. 
Phrenologically,  it  was  a  disappointment,  the  extreme  lowness 
of  the  forehead  striking  every  one,  and  the  so-called  organs 
of  wit,  causality,  and  comparison  being  scarcely  developed  at 
all.  There  were  peculiarities,  however,  in  the  shape  of  the 
interior  indicating  larger  capacity  of  brain  than  would  have 
been  inferred  from  the  external  aspect.  Stella's  coffin  was 
exhumed,  and  her  skull  examined  at  the  same  time.  The 
examiners  found  the  skull  "  a  perfect  model  of  symmetry  and 
beauty." 

Have  we  said  too  much  in  declaring  that  of  all  the  men  who 
illustrated  that  period  of  our  literary  history  which  lies  be- 
tween the  Kevolution  of  1688  and  the  beginning  or  middle  of 
the  reign  of  George  II.,  Swift  alone  (excepting  Pope,  and 
excepting  him  only  on  certain  definite  and  peculiar  grounds) 
fulfils  to  any  tolerable  extent  those  conditions  which  would 
entitle  him  to  the  epithet  of  "  great,"  already  refused  by  us 
to  his  age  as  a  whole?  We  do  not  think  so.  Swift  was 
a  great  genius;  nay,  if  by  greatness  we  understand  general 
mass  and  energy  rather  than  any  preconceived  peculiarity  of 
quality,  he  was  the  greatest  genius  of  his  age.  Neither 
Addison,  nor  Steele,  nor  Pope,  nor  Defoe,  possessed,  in  any- 
thing like  the  same  degree,  that  which  Goethe  and  Niebuhr, 
seeking  a  name  for  a  certain  attribute  found  always'  present, 
as  they  thought,  in  the  higher  and  more  forcible  order  of 
historic  characters,  agreed  to  call  the  demoniac  element.  In- 
deed very  few  men  in  our  literature,  from  first  to  last,  have 
had  so  much  of  this  element  in  them — the  sign  and  source  of 
all  real  greatness — as  Swift.  In  him  it  was  so  obvious  as  to 
attract  notice  at  once.  "  There  is  something  in  your  looks," 
wrote  Vanessa  to  him,  "so  awful  that  it  strikes  me  dumb;" 
and  again,  "  Sometimes  you  strike  me  with  that  prodigious 
awe,  I  tremble  with  fear ;"  and  again,  "  What  marks  are 
there  of  a  deity  that  you  are  not  known  by?"     True,  these 


170  DEAN  SWIFT. 

are  the  words  of  a  woman  infatuated  witli  love ;  but  there 
is  evidence  that  wherever  Swift  went,  and  in  whatever  society 
he  was,  there  was  this  magnetic  power  in  his  presence.  Pope 
felt  it;  Addison  felt  it;  they  all  felt  it.  We  question  if, 
among  all  our  literary  celebrities,  from  first  to  last,  there  has 
been  one  more  distinguished  for  being  personally  formidable 
to  all  who  came  near  him. 

And  yet  in  calling  Swift  a  great  genius  we  clearly  do  not 
mean  to  rank  him  in  the  same  order  of  greatness  with  such 
men  among  his  predecessors  as  Spenser,  or  Shakespeare,  or 
Milton,  or  such  men  among  his  successors,  as  Scott,  Coleridge 
and  Wordsworth.  We  even  retain  instinctively  the  right  of 
not  according  to  him  a  certain  kind  of  admiration  which  we 
bestow  on  such  men  of  his  own  generation  as  Pope,  Steele, 
and  Addison.  How  is  this  ?  What  is  the  drawback  about 
Swift's  genius  which  prevents  us  from  referring  him  to  that 
highest  order  of  literary  greatness  to  which  we  do  refer  others, 
who  in  respect  of  hard  general  capacity  were  apparently  not 
superior  to  him,  and  on  the  borders  of  which  we  also  place 
some  who  in  that  respect  were  certainly  his  inferiors?  To 
make  the  question  more  special,  why  do  we  call  Milton  great 
in  quite  a  different  sense  from  that  in  which  we  consent  to 
confer  the  same  epithet  on  Swift  ? 

Altogether,  it  will  be  said,  Milton  was  a  greater  man  than 
Swift;  his  intellect  was  higher,  richer,  deeper,  grander ;  his 
views  of  things  are  more  profound,  grave,  stately,  and  exalted. 
This  is  a  true  enough  statement  of  the  case ;  and  we  like  that 
comprehensive  use  of  the  word  intellect  which  it  implies, 
wrapping  up,  as  it  were,  all  that  is  in  and  about  a  man  in  this 
one  word,  so  as  to  dispense  with  the  distinctions  between 
imaginative  and  non-imaginative,  spiritual  and  unspiritual 
natures,  and  make  every  possible  question  about  a  man  a 
mere  question  in  the  end  as  to  the  size  or  degree  of  his  intel- 
lect. But  such  a  mode  of  speaking  is  too  violent  and  re- 
condite for  common  purposes.  According  to  the  common  use 
of  the  word  intellect,  it  might  be  maintained  (we  do  not  say  it 
would)  that  Swift's  intellect,  meaning  his  strength  of  mental 
grasp,  was  equal  to  Milton's;  and  yet  that,  by  reason  of  the 


DEAN   SWIFT.  171 

fact  that  Jiis  intellectual  style  was  deficient,  that  lie  did  not 
grasp  things  precisely  in  the  Miltonic  way,  a  distinction  might 
be  drawn  unfavourable,  on  the  whole,  to  his  genius  as  com- 
pared with  that  of  Milton.  According  to  such  a  view,  we 
must  seek  for  that  in  Swift's  genius,  upon  which  it  depends 
that  while  we  accord  to  it  all  the  admiration  we  bestow  on 
strength,  our  sympathies  with  height  or  sublimity  are  left 
unmoved.  Nor  have  we  far  to  seek.  When  Goethe  and 
Niebuhr  generalized  in  the  phrase,  **  the  demoniac  element," 
that  mystic  something  which  they  seemed  to  detect  in  all  men 
of  unusual  potency  among  their  fellows,  they  used  the  word 
"  demoniac,"  not  in  its  English  sense,  as  signifying  what  ap- 
pertains specially  to  the  demons  or  powers  of  darkness,  but  in 
its  Greek  sense,  as  equally  implying  the  unseen  agencies  of 
light  and  good.  The  demoniac  element  in  a  man,  therefore, 
may  in  one  case  be  the  demoniac  of  the  etherial  and  celestial, 
in  another  the  demoniac  of  the  Tartarean  and  infernal.  There 
is  a  demoniac  of  the  supernatural — angels,  and  seraphs,  and 
white-winged  airy  messengers  swaying  men's  phantasies  from 
above;  and  there  is  a  demoniac  of  the  infra-natural — fiends 
and  shapes  of  horror  tugging  at  men's  thoughts  from  beneath. 
The  demoniac  in  Swift  was  of  the  latter  kind.  It  is  false,  it 
would  be  an  entire  mistake  as  to  his  genius,  to  say  that  he 
regarded,  or  was  inspired  by,  only  the  worldly  and  the  secular ; 
that  men,  women,  and  their  relations  in  the  little  world  of 
visible  life,  were  all  that  his  intellect  cared  to  recognise.  He 
also,  like  our  Miltons  and  our  Shakespeares,  and  all  our  men 
who  have  been  anything  more  than  prudential  and  pleasant 
writers,  had  his  being  anchored  in  things  and  imaginations 
beyond  the  visible  verge.  But  while  it  was  given  to  them 
to  hold  rather  by  things  and  imaginations  belonging  to  the 
region  of  the  celestial,  to  hear  angelic  music  and  the  rustling 
of  seraphic  wings  ;  it  was  his  un happier  lot  to  be  related  rather 
to  the  darker  and  subterranean  mysteries.  One  might  say  of 
Swift  that  he  had  far  less  of  belief  in  a  God  than  of  belief  in 
a  devil.  He  is  like  a  man  walking  on  the  earth  and  among 
the  busy  haunts  of  his  fellow-mortals,  observing  them  and 
their  ways,  and  taking  his  part  in  the  bustle ;  all  the  while, 


172  DEAN   SWIFT. 

however,  conscious  of  the  tuggings  downward  of  secret 
chains  reaching  into  the  world  of  the  demons.  Hence  his 
ferocity,  his  misanthropy,  his  sceva  mdignatio,  all  of  them  true 
forms  of  energy,  imparting  unusual  potency  to  a  life ;  but 
forms  of  energy  bred  of  communion  with  what  outlies  nature 
on  the  lower  or  infernal  side. 

Swift,  doubtless,  had  this  melancholic  tendency  in  him  con- 
stitutionally from  the  beginning.     From  the  first  we  see  him 
an  unruly,  rebellious,  gloomy,  revengeful,  unforgiving  spirit, 
loyal  to  no  authority,  and  gnashing  under  every  restraint. 
With  nothing  small  or  weak  in  his  nature,  too  proud  to  be 
dishonest,  bold  and  fearless  in  his  opinions,  capable  of  strong 
attachments  and  of  hatred  as  strong,  it  was  to  be  predicted 
that  if  the  swarthy  Irish  youth,  whom  Sir  William  Temple 
received  into  his  house,  when  his  college  had  all  but  expelled 
him  for  contumacy,  should  ever  be  eminent  in  the  world,  it 
would  be  for  fierce  and  controversial,  and  not  for  beautiful  or 
harmonious,  activity.     It  is  clear,  however^  on  a  survey  of 
Swift's  career,  that  the  gloom  and  melancholy  which  charac- 
terised it,  was  not  altogether  congenital,  but  in  part,  at  least 
grew  out  of  some  special  circumstance  or  set  of  circumstances, 
having  a  precise  date  and  locality  among  the  facts  of  his  life. 
In  other  words,  there  was  some  secret  in  Swift's  life,  some 
root  of  bitterness  or  remorse,  diffusing  a  black  poison  through- 
out his  whole  existence.     That  communion  with  the  invisible 
almost  exclusively  on  the  infernal  side — that  consciousness  of 
chains  wound  round  his  own  moving  frame  at  the  one  end, 
and  at  the  other  tugged  at  by  demons  in  the  depths  of  their 
populous  pit,  while  no  cords  of  love  were  felt  sustaining  him 
from  the  countervailing  neaven — had  its   origin,  in  part  at 
least,  in  some  one  recollection  or  cause  of  dread.    It  was  some 
one  demon  down  in  that  pit  that  tugged  the  chains ;  the  others 
but  assisted  him.     Thackeray's  perception  seems  to  us  exact 
when  he  says  of  Swift  that  "  he  goes  through  life,  tearing, 
like  a  man  possessed  with  a  devil;"  or  again,  changing  the 
form  of  the  figure,  that,  ''  like  Abudah,  in  the  Arabian  story, 
he  is  always  looking  out  for  the  Fury,  and  knows  that  the 
night  will  come,  and  the  inevitable  hag  with  it."     What  was 


# 


DEAN    SWIFT.  173 

this  Fury,  this  hag  that  duly  came  in  the  night,  making  the 
mornings  horrible  by  the  terrors  of  recollection,  the  evenings 
horrible  by  those  of  anticipation,  and  leaving  but  a  calm  hour 
at  full  mid-day  ?  There  was  a  secret  in  Swift's  life ;  what 
was  it  ?  His  biographers  as  yet  have  failed  to  agree  on  this 
dark  topic.  Thackeray's  hypothesis,  that  the  cause  of  Swift's 
despair  was  chiefly  his  consciousness  of  disbelief  in  the  creed 
to  which  he  had  sworn  his  professional  faith,  does  not  seem 
to  us  sufficient.  In  Swift's  days,  and  even  with  his  frank 
nature,  we  think  that  difficulty  could  have  been  got  over. 
There  was  nothing,  at  least,  so  unique  in  the  case  as  to  justify 
the  supposition  that  this  was  what  Archbishop  King  referred 
to  in  that  memorable  saying  to  Dr.  Delany,  "  You  have  just 
met  the  most  miserable  man  on  earth  ;  but  on  the  subject  of 
his  wretchedness  you  must  never  ask  a  question."  Had  Swift 
made  a  confession  of  scepticism  to  the  Archbishop,  we  do  not 
think  the  prelate  would  have  been  taken  so  very  much  by  sur- 
prise. Nor  can  we  think,  with  some,  that  Swift's  vertigo  (now 
pronounced  to  have  been  increasing  congestion  of  the  brain) 
and  his  life-long  certainty  that  it  would  end  in  idiotcy  or 
madness,  are  the  true  explanation  of  this  interview  and  of  the 
mystery  which  it  shrouds.  There  was  cause  enough  for  me- 
lancholy here,  but  not  exactly  the  cause  that  meets  the  case. 
Another  hypothesis  there  is  of  a  physical  kind,  which  Scott 
and  others  hint  at,  and  which  finds  great  acceptance  with  the 
medical  philosophers.  Swift,  it  is  said,  was  of  "  a  cold  tem- 
perament," &c.  &c.  But  why  a  confession  on  the  part  of 
Swift  that  he  was  not  a  marrying  man,  even  had  he  added 
that  he  desired,  above  all  things  in  the  world,  to  be  a  person 
of  this  sort,  should  have  so  moved  the  heart  of  an  Arch- 
bishop, we  cannot  conceive.  Besides,  although  this  hypo- 
thesis might  explain  much  of  the  Stella  and  Vanessa  imbroglio, 
it  would  not  explain  all ;  nor  do  we  see  on  what  foundation  it 
could  rest.  Scott's  assertion  that  all  through  Swift's  writings 
there  is  no  evidence  of  his  having  felt  the  tender  passion,  is 
simply  untrue.  On  the  whole,  the  hypothesis  which  has  been 
started  of  a  too  near  consanguinity  between  Swift  and  Stella, 
either  known  from  the  first  to  one  or  both,  or  discovered  too 


174  DEAN   SWIFT. 

late,  would  most  nearly  suit  tlie  conditions  of  the  case.  And 
yet,  so  far  as  we  have  seen,  this  hypothesis  also  rests  on  air, 
with  no  one  fact  to  support  it.  Could  we  suppose  that  Swift, 
like  another  Eugene  Aram,  went  through  the  world  with  a 
murder  on  his  mind,  it  might  be  taken  as  a  solution  of  the 
mystery ;  but  as  we  cannot  do  this,  we  must  be  content  with 
supposing  that  either  some  one  of  the  foregoing  hypotheses, 
or  some  combination  of  them,  is  to  be  accepted,  or  that  the 
matter  is  altogether  inscrutable. 

Such  by  constitution  as  we  have  described  him — with  an 
intellect  strong  as  iron,  much  acquired  knowledge,  an  ambition 
all  but  insatiable,  and  a  decided  desire  to  be  wealthy — Swift, 
almost  as  a  matter  of  course,  flung  himself  impetuously  into 
the  Whig  and  Tory  controversy,  which  was  the  question 
paramount  in  his  time.  In  that  he  laboured  as  only  a  man 
of  his  powers  could,  bringing  to  the  side  of  the  controversy 
on  which  he  chanced  to  be — and  we  believe  when  he  was  on  a 
side  it  was  honestly  because  he  found  a  certain  preponderance 
of  right  in  it — a  hard  and  ruthless  vigour  which  served  it  im- 
mensely. But  from  the  first,  and,  at  all  events,  after  the  dis- 
appointments of  a  political  career  had  been  experienced  by 
him,  his  nature  would  not  work  alone  in  the  narrow  warfare 
of  Whiggism  and  Toryism,  but  overflowed  in  general  bitter- 
ness of  reflection  on  all  the  customs  and  ways  of  humanity. 
The  following  passage  in  Gulliver  s  Voyage  to  Brohdingnag^ 
describing  how  the  politics  of  Europe  appeared  to  the  King 
of  Brobdingnag,  shows  us  Swift  himself  in  his  larger  mood 
of  thought. 

"  This  prince  took  a  pleasure  in  conversing  witli  me,  inquiring  into  the 
manners,  religion,  laws,  government,  and  learning  of  Europe ;  wherein  I  gave 
him  the  best  account  I  was  able.  His  apprehension  was  so  clear,  and  his 
judgment  so  exact,  that  he  made  very  wise  i-eflections  and  observations  upon 
all  I  said.  But  I  confess  that  after  I  had  been  a  little  too  copious  in  talking 
of  my  own  beloved  country,  of  our  trade,  and  wars  by  sea  and  land,  of  our 
schisms  in  religion,  and  parties  in  the  state,  the  prejudices  of  his  education 
prevailed  so  far  that  he  could  not  forbear  taking  me  up  in  his  right  hand,  and 
stroking  me  gently  with  the  other,  after  an  hearty  fit  of  laughing,  asking  me, 
whether  /  was  a  Whig  or  Tory.  Then  turning  to  his  first  minister,  who  waited 
behind  him  with  a  white  staff  nearly  as  tall  as  the  mainmast  of  the  *  Royal 
Sovereign,'  he  observed  how  contemptible  a  thing  was  human  grandeur,  which 
could  be  mimicked  by  such  diminutive  insects  as  I ;  *  And  yet,'  say  s  he,  '  I  dare 
engage  these  creatures  have  their  titles  and  distinctions  of  honour ;  they  con- 
trive little  nests  and  burrows,  that  they  call  houses  and  cities ;  they  make  a 


or 

DEAN   SWIFT.  175 

figure  in  dress  and  equipage  ;  they  love,  they  fight,  they  dispute,  they  cheat, 
they  betray,'  And  thus  he  continued  on,  while  my  colour  came  and  went 
several  times  with  indignation  to  hear  our  noble  country,  the  mistress  of  arts 
and  arms,  the  scourge  of  France,  the  arbitress  of  Europe,  the  seat  of  virtue, 
piety,  honour,  truth,  the  pride  and  envy  of  the  world,  so  contemptuously 
treated."  ^  ^ 

Swift's  writings,  accordingly,  divide  themselves,  in  the  main, 
into  two  classes, — pamphlets,  tracts,  lampoons,  and  the  like, 
bearing  directly  on  persons  and  topics  of  the  day,  and  written 
with  the  ordinary  purpose  of  a  partisan  ;  and  satires  of  a  more 
general  aim,  directed,  in  the  spirit  of  a  cynic  philosopher, 
against  humanity  on  the  whole,  or  against  particular  human 
classes,  aiTangements,  and  modes  of  thinking.  In  some  of 
his  writings  the  politician  and  the  general  satirist  are  seen 
together.  The  JDrapters  Letters  and  most  of  the  poetical 
lampoons,  exhibit  Swift  in  his  direct  mood  as  a  party-writer ; 
in  the  Tale  of  a  Tub  we  have  the  ostensible  purpose  of  a 
partisan  masking  a  reserve  of  general  scepticism  ;  in  the 
Battle  of  the  Books  we  have  a  satire  partly  personal  to 
individuals,  partly  with  a  reference  to  a  prevailing  tone  of 
opinion  ;  in  the  Voyage  to  Laputa  we  have  a  satire  on  a  great 
class  of  men ;  and  in  the  Voyages  to  LilUput  and  Brobdingnag^ 
and  still  more  in  the  story  of  the  Houynhnms  and  Yahoos, 
we  have  human  nature  itself  analysed  and  laid  bare. 

Swift  took  no  care  of  his  writings,  never  acknowledged 
some  of  them,  never  collected  them,  and  suffered  them  to  find 
their  way  about  the  world  as  chance,  demand,  and  the  piracy 
of  publishers  directed.  As  all  know,  it  is  in  his  character 
as  a  humorist,  an  inventor  of  the  preposterous  as  a  medium 
for  the  reflective,  and  above  all  as  a  master  of  irony,  that  he 
takes  his  place  as  one  of  the  chiefs  of  English  literature. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that,  as  regards  the  literary  form 
which  he  affected  most,  he  took  hints  from  Rabelais,  as  the 
greatest  original  in  the  realm  of  the  absurd.  Sometimes,  as 
in  his  description  of  the  Strulbrugs  in  the  Voyage  to  Laputa, 
he  approaches  the  ghastly  power  of  that  writer ;  on  the  whole, 
however,  there  is  more  of  stern  English  realism  in  him,  and 
less  of  sheer  riot  and  wildness.  Sometimes,  however.  Swift 
throws  off  the  guise  of  the  humorist,  and  speaks  seriously 


176  DEAN   SWIFT. 

and  in  his  own  name.  On  such  occasions  we  find  ourselves 
simply  in  the  presence  of  a  man  of  strong,  sagacious,  and 
thoroughly  English  mind,  content,  as  is  the  hahit  of  English- 
men, with  vigorous  proximate  sense,  expressed  in  plain  and 
rather  coarse  idiom.  For  the  speculative  he  shows  in  these 
cases  neither  liking  nor  aptitude ;  he  takes  obvious  reasons 
and  arguments  as  they  come  to  hand,  and  uses  them  in  a 
robust,  downright  Saxon  manner.  In  one  respect  he  stands 
out  conspicuously  even  among  plain  Saxon  writers— his  total 
freedom  from  cant.  Johnson's  advice  to  Boswell,  "  above  all 
things  to  clear  his  mind  of  cant,"  was  perhaps  never  better 
illustrated  than  in  the  case  of  Dean  Swift.  Indeed,  it  might 
be  given  as  a  summary  definition  of  Swift's  character  that  he 
had  cleared  his  mind  of  cant,  without  having  succeeded  in  filling 
the  void  with  song.  It  was  Swift's  intense  hatred  of  cant 
— cant  in  religion,  cant  in  morality,  cant  in  literature — that 
occasioned  many  of  those  peculiarities  which  shock  people  in 
his  writings.  His  principle  being  to  view  things  as  they  are, 
irrespective  of  all  the  accumulated  cant  of  orators  and  poets, 
he  naturally  prosecuted  his  investigations  into  those  classes  of 
circumstances  which  orators  and  poets  have  omitted  as  unsuit- 
able for  their  purposes.  If  they  had  viewed  men  as  angels, 
he  would  view  them  as  Yahoos.  If  they  had  placed  the 
springs  of  action  among  the  fine  phrases  and  the  sublimities, 
he  would  trace  them  down  into  their  secret  connexions  with 
the  bestial  and  the  obscene.  Hence— as  much  as  for  any  of 
those  physiological  reasons  which  some  of  his  biographers 
assign  for  it — his  undisguised  delight  in  filth.  And  hence, 
also,  probably  —  seeing  that  among  the  forms  of  cant  he 
included  the  traditional  manner  of  speaking  of  women  in  their 
relations  to  men — his  studious  contempt,  whether  in  writing 
for  men  or  women,  of  all  the  accustomed  decencies.  It  was 
not  only  the  more  obvious  forms  of  cant,  however,  that  Swift 
had  in  aversion.  Even  to  that  minor  form  of  cant  which 
consists  in  the  "  trite  "  he  gave  no  quarter.  Whatever  was 
habitually  said  by  the  majority  of  people,  seemed  to  him,  for 
that  very  reason,  not  worthy  of  being  said  at  all,  much  less 
put  into  print.     A  considerable  portion  of  his  writings,  as,  for 


DEAN  SWIFT.  177 

example,  his  Tritical  Essay  on  the  Faculties  of  the  Mind, 
and  his  Art  of  Polite  Conversation — in  the  one  of  which  he 
strings  together  a  series  of  the  most  threadbare  maxims  and 
quotations  to  be  found  in  books,  offering  the  compilation  as  an 
original  disquisition  of  his  own  ;  and,  in  the  other,  imitates  the 
insipidity  of  ordinary  table-talk  in  society — may  be  regarded 
as  showing  a  systematic  determination  on  his  part  to  turn 
the  trite  into  ridicule.  Hence,  in  his  own  writings,  though 
he  abstains  from  the  profound,  he  never  falls  into  the  com- 
monplace. Apart  from  all  Swift's  other  merits,  there  are  to 
be  found  scattered  through  his  writings  not  a  few  distinct 
propositions  of  an  innovative  and  original  character  respect- 
ing our  social  arrangements.  We  have  seen  his  doctrine  as 
to  the  education  of  women ;  and  we  may  mention,  as  an 
instance  of  the  same  kind,  his  denunciation  of  the  institution 
of  standing  armies  as  incompatible  with  freedom.  Curiously 
enough,  also,  it  was  Swift's  belief  that,  Yahoos  as  we  are,  the 
world  is  always  in  the  right. 


N 


CHATTERTON. 

A   STORY   OF   THE   YEAR   1770. 


PART  I.  -BRISTOL. 
CHAPTER  I. — WILKES  AND  LIBERTY. 

Was  there  ever  a  time  that  did  not  think  highly  of  its  own 
importance  ?  Was  there  ever  a  time  when  the  world  did  not 
believe  itself  to  be  going  to  pieces,  and  when  alarming  'pam- 
phlets on  ''  the  present  crisis  "  did  not  lie  unbought  on  the 
counters  of  the  booksellers  ?  Poor  mortals  that  we  are,  how 
we  do  make  the  most  of  our  own  little  portion  in  the  general 
drama  of  history  !  Nor  are  we  quite  wrong,  after  all.  There 
is  nothing  really  to  laugh  at  in  our  laborious  anxieties  about 
this  same  "  present  crisis,^'  which  is  always  happening,  and 
never  over.  "  We  live  in  earnest  times" — what  is  there  in  the 
incessant  repetition  of  this  stereotyped  phrase,  but  an  explicit 
assertion,  as  it  were,  by  each  generation  for  itself,  that  the 
great  sense  of  life,  transmitted  already  through  so  many  gener- 
ations, is  now,  in  turn,  passing  through  it?  The  time  that 
we  ourselves  are  alive,  the  time  that  our  eyes  behold  the  light, 
and  that  the  breath  is  strong  in  our  nostrils,  that  is  the  crisis 
for  us  ;  and  although  it  belongs  to  a  higher  than  we  to  deter- 
mine the  worth  of  what  we  do,  yet  that  we  should  do  every 
thing  with  a  certain  amount  of  vehemence  and  bustle,  seems 
but  the  necessary  noise  of  the  shuttle,  as  we  weave  forth  our 
allotted  portion  of  the  general  web  of  existence. 

*  A  portion  of  this  sketch  appeared  in  the  numbers  of  the  Dublin  Univei'sity 
Magazine  for  July,  August,  and  October,  1851.  The  rest  is  now  published 
for  the  first  time. 


CHATTEETON.  179 

Well,  eighty  years  ago,  there  was  "  a  crisis  "  in  England. 
That  was  the  time,  reader,  when  our  great-grandfathers,  laud- 
ably intent  on  bringing  about  your  existence  and  mine,  were, 
for  that  purpose,  paying  court  to  our  reluctant  great-grand- 
mothers. George  III.,  an  obese  young  sovereign  of  thirty- 
three,  had  then  been  ten  years  on  the  throne.  Newspapers 
were  not  so  numerous  as  now ;  parliament  was  not  open  to 
reporters ;  and  had  gentlemen  of  the  liberal  press  been  alive, 
with  their  present  political  opinions,  every  soul  of  them  would 
have  been  hanged.  Nevertheless,  people  got  on  very  well ; 
and  there  was  enough  for  a  nation  of  seven  millions  to  take 
interest  in  and  talk  about,  when  they  were  in  an  inquisitive 
humour.  Lord  North,  for  example,  an  ungainly  country  gen- 
tleman, with  goggle  eyes  and  big  cheeks,  had  just  succeeded 
the  Duke  of  Grafton  as  the  head  of  a  Tory  ministry ;  Lord 
Chatham,  throwing  off  his  gout  for  the  occasion,  had,  at  the 
age  of  sixty-two_,  resumed  his  place  in  the  public  eye  as  the 
thundering  Jove  of  the  Opposition  ;  Bute  and  Scotchmen  were 
still  said  to  be  sucking  the  blood  of  the  nation  ;  and  Edmund 
Burke,  then  in  the  prime  of  his  strength  and  intellect,  was 
publishing  masterly  pamphlets,  and  trying  to  construct,  under 
the  auspices  of  the  Marquis  of  Kockingham,  a  new  Whig 
party.  Among  the  notabilities  out  of  parliament  were — Dr. 
Samuel  Johnson,  then  past  his  sixty-first  year,  and  a  most 
obstinate  old  Tory;  his  friend  Sir  Joshua,  fourteen  years 
younger ;  Goldy,  several  years  younger  still ;  and  Garrick, 
fifty-four  years  of  age,  but  as  sprightly  as  ever.  In  another 
circle,  but  not  less  prominently  before  the  town,  were  Parson 
Home  and  Mrs.  Macaulay  ;  and  all  England  was  ringing  with 
the  terrible  letters  of  the  invisible  Junius.  But  the  man  of 
the  hour,  the  hero  of  the  self-dubbed  crisis,  was  John  Wilkes. 

Arrested  in  1763,  on  account  of  the  publication  of  No.  45 
of  the  North  Briton,  in  which  one  of  the  King's  speeches 
had  been  severely  commented  on ;  discharged  a  few  days 
afterwards  in  consequence  of  his  privilege  as  a  member  of 
parliament;  lifted  instantaneously  by  this  accident  into  an 
unexampled  blaze  of  popular  favour ;  persecuted  all  the  more 
on  this  account  by  the  Court  party ;  at  last,  in  January,  1764, 

n2 


180  chatterton: 

expelled  from  his  seat  in  the  House  of  Commons  by  a  vote 
declaring  him  to  be  a  seditious  libeller  ;  put  on  his  trial  there- 
after, before  the  Court  of  Queen's  Bench,  and  escaping  sen- 
tence only  by  a  voluntary  flight  to  France-r^this  squint-eyed 
personage,  known  up  to  that  time  only  as  a  profligate  wit  about 
town,  who  lived  on  his  wife's  money,  and  fascinated  other 
women  in  spite  of  his  ugliness,  had  now  been  for  six  years 
the  idol  and  glory  of  England.  For  six  years  "  Wilkes  and 
Forty-five"  had  been  chalked  on  the  walls ;  "  Wilkes  and 
Liberty"  had  been  the  cry  of  the  mobs ;  and  portraits  of 
Wilkes  had  hung  in  the  windows  of  the  print-shops.  Ee- 
membering  that  he  was  the  champion  of  liberal  opinions,  even 
pious  Dissenters  had  forgotten  his  atheism  and  his  profligacy. 
They  distinguished,  they  said,  between  the  man  and  the  cause 
which  he  represented. 

For  a  year  or  two  the  patriot  had  been  content  with  the 
mere  echo  of  this  applause  as  it  was  wafted  to  him  in  Paris  ; 
but,  cash  failing  him  there,  and  the  parliament  from  which  he 
had  been  ejected  having  been  dissolved,  he  had  returned  to 
England  early  in  1768,  had  offered  himself  as  a  candidate 
for  the  city  of  London,  had  lost  that  election,  but  had  almost 
instantly  afterwards  been  returned  for  the  county  of  Middle- 
sex. Hereupon  he  had  ventured  to  surrender  himself  to  the 
process  of  the  law  ;  and  the  result  had  been  his  condemnation, 
in  June,  1768,  to  pay  a  fine  of  1,000L,  and  undergo  an  im- 
prisonment of  twenty-two  months.  Nor  had  this  been  all. 
No  sooner  had  parliament  met  than  it  had  proceeded  to  expel 
the  member  for  Middlesex.  Then  had  begun  the  tug  of  war 
between  parliament  and  the  people.  Thirteen  days  after  his 
expulsion,  the  exasperated  electors  of  Middlesex  had  again 
returned  Wilkes  as  their  representative,  no  one  having  dared 
to  oppose  him.  Again  the  house  had  expelled  him,  and  again 
the  electors  had  returned  him.  Not  till  after  the  fourth  farce 
of  election  had  the  contest  ceased.  On  that  occasion  three 
other  candidates  had  presented  themselves ;  and  one  of  them, 
Colonel  Luttrell,  having  polled  296  votes,  had  been  declared 
by  the  house  to  be  duly  elected,  notwithstanding  that  tlie 
votes  for  Wilkes  had  been  four  times  as  numerous.     Tremen- 


A  STORY   OF   THE   YEAR   1770.  181 

dous  then  had  been  the  outcry  of  popular  indignation.  During 
the  whole  of  the  years  1768  and  1769  "  the  violation  of  the 
right  of  election  by  parliamentary  despotism"  had  been  the 
great  topic  of  the  country ;  and  in  the  beginning  of  1770  this 
was  still  the  question  of  the  hour,  the  question  forced  by  the 
people  into  all  other  discussions,  and  regarding  which  all  can- 
didates for  popular  favour,  from  Chatham  himself  down  to  the 
parish  beadle,  were  obliged  distinctly  to  declare  themselves. 

Meanwhile,  Wilkes  was  in  the  King^s  Bench,  Southwark. 
His  consolations,  we  may  suppose,  were,  that  by  all  this  his 
popularity  had  been  but  increased ;  that  Parson  Home  and 
the  Society  for  the  protection  of  the  Bill  of  Eights  had 
organised  a  subscription  in  his  favour,  which  would  more  than 
pay  his  fine ;  and  that  the  whole  country  was  waiting  to  do 
him  honour  on  the  day  when  he  should  step  out  of  prison. 

It  came  at  last :  Tuesday,  the  17th  of  April,  1770.  There 
was  a  considerable  show  of  excitement  all  day  in  the  vicinity 
of  the  prison  ;  and  it  was  with  some  difficulty  that  the  patriot, 
getting  into  a  hackney-coach  late  in  the  afternoon,  made  his 
way  past  the  cordial  clutches  of  the  mob,  into  the  country. 
That  evening  and  the  next  there  were  huzzas  and  illumina- 
tions in  his  honour ;  the  house  of  Beckford,  the  Lord  Mayor, 
in  the  then  aristocratic  region  of  Soho-square,  was  conspicu- 
ously decorated  with  the  word  "  Liberty  ;^'  and  public  dinners 
to  celebrate  the  release  of  the  patriot  were  held  in  various  parts 
of  the  city. 

The  rejoicings  were  not  confined  to  London.  In  many 
other  towns  of  England  there  were  demonstrations  in  honour 
of  Wilkes.  A  list  of  the  chief  places  may  still  be  culled  from 
the  newspapers  of  the  day.  From  these  newspapers  we  learn, 
what  indeed  might  have  been  independently  surmised,  that 
not  the  least  eager  among  the  towns  of  England  in  this 
emulous  show  of  regard  for  Wilkes,  was  the  ancient  mercan- 
tile city  of  Bristol.  The  following  appeared  in  the  Public 
Advertiser,  as  from  a  Bristol  correspondent,  on  the  very  day 
of  Wilkes's  release. 

''Bristol,  April  Uth.—We  hear  that  on  Wednesday  next,  being  the  day  of 
Mr.  Wilkes's  enlargement,  forty -five  persons  are  to  dine  at  the  '  Crown,'  in  the 


182  CHATTEETON : 

pass^e  leading  from  Broad-street  to  Tower-lane.  The  entertainment  is  to 
consist  of  two  rounds  of  beef,  of  45  lbs.  each  ;  two  legs  of  veal,  weighing  45  lbs. ; 
two  ditto  of  pork,  45  lbs. ;  a  pig,  roasted,  45  lbs. ;  two  puddings  of  45  lbs. ;  45 
loaves;  and,  to  drink,  45  tankai'ds  of  ale.  After  dinner,  they  are  to  smoke 
45  pipes  of  tobacco,  and  to  drink  45  bowls  of  punch.  Among  others,  the  fol- 
lowing toasts  are  to  be  given  : — 1.  Long  live  the  King ;  2.  Long  live  the  sup- 
porters of  British  liberty ;  3.  The  Magistrates  of  Bristol.  And  the  dinner  to 
be  on  the  table  exactly  45  minutes  after  two  o'clock." 

Whether  this  precise  dinner,  thus  announced  by  the  Bristol 
correspondent  of  the  Advertiser,  was  held  or  not,  must,  we  fear, 
remain  a  mystery;  but  that  there  were  several  dinners  in  Bristol 
on  the  occasion,  is  quite  certain.  On  Thursday,  the  19th,  in 
particular,  a  public  entertainment  (possibly  the  above,  with 
the  day  altered)  was  given  in  honour  of  the  patriot  by  "an 
eminent  citizen/'  and  attended  by  many  of  the  most  influential 
men  in  the  place. 

Ah  !  the  poetry  of  coincidences  !  On  that  same  Thursday 
evening,  while  the  assembled  guests  in  the  "  Crown  "  were 
clattering  their  glasses  in  the  hot  room,  puffing  their  tobacco- 
smoke,  and  making  the  roof  ring  with  their  tipsy  uproar, 
there  was  walking  moodily  through  the  streets  of  Bristol  a 
young  attorney's  apprentice,  who,  four  days  before,  had  been 
discharged  from  his  employment  because  he  had  alarmed  his 
master  by  threatening  to  commit  suicide.  This  attorney's 
apprentice  was  Thomas  Chatter  ton. 


CHAPTER  II, 

THE  ATfOBNEY's  APPRENTICE  OF   BRISTOL. 

It  was  in  the  month  of  August,  1760,  that  a  poor  widow, 
who  supported  herself  and  two  children  by  dressmaking,  and 
by  keeping  a  small  day-school  in  one  of  the  back  streets  of 
Bristol,  gained  admission  for  her  younger  child,  a  boy  of  seven 
years  and  nine  months  old,  into  Colston's  school,  a  charitable 
foundation,  similar  in  some  respects  to  Christ's  Hospital  in 
London.  The  husband  of  this  widow,  a  rough,  drunken 
fellow,  who  had  been  a  singer,  or  sub-chaunter,  in  the  cathe- 
dral choir  of  Bristol,  as  well  as  the  master  of  a  kind  of  free 
school  for  boys,  had  died  a  month  or  two  before  his  son's  birth. 
An  old  grandmother,  however— either  the  widow's  own  mother 


A  STORY   OF  THE  YEAR   1770.  183 

or  her  husband's— was  still  alive,  dependent,  in  some  degree, 
on  the  family. 

For  nearly  seven  years,  or  from  August,  1760,  to  July, 
1767,  the  boy  remained  an  inmate  of  Colston's  school,  wear- 
ing, as  the  Christ's  Hospital  boys  still  do,  a  blue  coat  and 
yellow  stockings,  and  receiving,  according  to  the  custom  of 
the  institution,  such  a  plain  education  as  might  fit  him  for  an 
ordinary  mercantile  or  mechanical  occupation.  But,  from  the 
very  first,  the  boy  was  singular.  For  one  thing,  he  was  a 
prodigious  reader.  The  Bible,  theological  treatises,  scraps  of 
history,  old  magazines,  poetry,  whatever  in  the  shape  of  a 
printed  volume  came  in  his  way — all  were  eagerly  pounced 
upon  and  devoured ;  and  it  was  not  long  before  his  reputation 
in  this  respect  enabled  him  to  lay  one  or  two  circulating 
libraries  under  friendly  contribution.  Then,  again,  his  temper, 
people  remarked,  had  something  in  it  quite  unusual  in  one  so 
young.  Generally  very  sullen  and  silent,  he  was  liable  to 
sudden  and  unaccountable  fits  of  weeping,  as  well  as  to  violent 
fits  of  rage.  He  was  also  extremely  secretive,  and  fond  of 
being  alone ;  and  on  Saturday  and  other  holiday  afternoons, 
when  he  was  at  liberty  to  go  home  from  school,  it  was  quite  a 
subject  of  speculation  with  his  mother,  Mrs.  Chatterton,  and 
her  acquaintances,  what  the  boy  could  be  doing,  sitting  alone 
for  hours,  as  was  his  habit,  in  a  garret  full  of  all  kinds  of  out- 
of-the-way  lumber. 

When  he  was  about  ten  years  of  age,  it  became  known  to 
some  of  his  seniors  that  the  little  Blue-coat  was  in  the  habit 
of  writing  verses.  His  first  attempt  in  this  way  had  been  a 
pious  little  achievement,  entitled  "  On  the  Last  Epiphany ; 
or,  Christ's  coming  to  Judgment;"  and  so  proud  had  he  been 
of  this  performance,  and  so  ambitious  of  seeing  it  in  print,  that 
he  had  boldly  dropped  it,  one  Saturday  afternoon,  into  the 
letter-box  of  Felix  Farley  s  Bristol  Journal,  a  weekly  news- 
paper in  high  local  repute.  It  accordingly  appeared  in  the 
columns  of  that  newspaper  on  the  8th  of  January,  1763. 
From  that  day  Chatterton  was  a  sworn  poet.  Piece  after 
piece  was  dropped  by  him  during  a  period  of  three  years  into 
the  letter-box  of  the  accommodating  Journal,     Only  one  of 


184  CHATTERTON  : 

these,  however,  is  it  necessary  to  mention  particularly— a 
little  lampoon,  printed  the  7th  of  January,  1764,  and  entitled 
"  The  Churchwarden  and  the  Apparition  ;  a  Fable."  A  Mr. 
Joseph  Thomas,  a  hrick-maker  by  trade,  chancing  in  that 
year  to  hold  the  office  of  churchwarden  for  the  parish  of  St. 
Mary  Eedcliffe,  had  greatly  scandalized  the  public  mind  by 
causing  the  old  churchyard  to  be  levelled,  and  the  surplus 
earth  and  clay  to  be  carted  away,  as  people  said,  for  his  own 
professional  uses.  For  this  outrage  on  decorum  he  was  much 
attacked  by  the  local  press,  and  nowhere  more  severely  than 
in  the  above-mentioned  verses  of  the  little  Blue-coat ;  in 
whom,  by-the-bye,  there  must  have  been  a  kind  of  hereditary 
resentment  of  such  a  piece  of  sacrilege,  seeing  that  his  ances- 
tors, the  Chattertons,  had  been  sextons  of  the  church  of  St. 
Mary  RedcliiFe  for  a  period  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  years 
continuously.  The  office  had,  in  fact,  only  passed  out  of  the 
family  on  the  death  of  an  older  brother  of  his  father,  named 
John  Chatterton. 

The  date  does  not  seem  quite  certain,  but  it  was  probably 
nearly  three  years  after  this  occurrence,  and  when  Chatterton 
was  above  fourteen  years  of  age,  and  one  of  the  senior  boys 
in  the  Blue-coat  School,  that  he  stepped,  one  afternoon,  into 
the  shop  of  a  Mr.  Burgum,  partner  of  a  Mr.  Catcott,  in  the 
pewter  trade. 

"I  have  found  out  a  secret  about  you,  Mr.  Burgum,"  he 
said,  going  up  to  the  pewterer  at  his  desk. 

*'  Indeed  :  what  is  it  ?''  said  Mr.  Burgum. 

"  That  you  are  descended  from  one  of  the  noblest  families 
in  England." 

"  I  did  not  know  it,"  said  the  victim. 

"  It  is  true,  though,"  said  Chatterton ;  "  and  to  prove  it,  I 
will  bring  you  your  pedigree  written  out,  as  I  have  traced  it 
by  the  help  of  books  of  the  peerage  and  old  parchments." 

Accordingly,  a  few  days  afterwards,  he  again  called,  and 
presented  the  astonished  pewterer  with  a  manuscript  copy- 
book, headed  in  large  text,  as  follows :  "  Account  of  the 
Family  of  the  De  Bergham,  from  the  Norman  Conquest  to  this 
time ;  collected  from  original  Eecords,  Tom*nament-rolls,  and 


A  STOEY   OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  185 

the  Heralds  of  March  and  Garter  Eecords,  by  T.  Chatterton." 
In  this  document  the  Burgum  pedigree  was  elaborately  traced 
up,  through  no  end  of  great  names  and  illustrious  intermar- 
riages, to  one  "  Simon  de  Seyncte  Lyze,  alias  Senliz,"  who 
had  come  into  England  with  the  Conqueror;  married  a  daughter 
of  the  Saxon  chief,  Waltheof;  become  possessed,  among 
other  properties,  of  Burgham  Castle,  in  Northumberland ;  and 
been  eventually  created  Earl  of  Northampton. 

Pleased  with  the  honours  thus  unexpectedly  thrust  upon 
him,  the  pewterer  gave  the  Blue-coat  five  shillings  for  his 
trouble.  To  show  his  gratitude,  Chatterton  soon  returned 
with  ''  A  Continuation  of  the  Account  of  the  Family  of  the 
De  Bergham,  from  the  Norman  Conquest  to  this  Time."  In 
the  original  pedigree,  the  young  genealogist  had  judiciously 
stopped  short  at  the  sixteenth  century.  In  the  supplement, 
however,  he  ventures  as  far  down  as  the  reign  of  Charles  II., 
back  to  which  point  the  pewterer  is  left  to  supply  the  links 
for  himself.  But  the  chief  feature  in  the  pedigree,  as  ela- 
borated in  the  second  document,  is,  that,  in  addition  to  other 
gTcat  names,  it  contains  a  poet.  This  poet,  whose  name  was 
John  De  Bergham,  was  a  monk  of  the  Cistercian  order,  in 
Bristol ;  he  had  been  educated  in  Oxford,  and  was  "  one  of 
the  greatest  ornaments  of  the  age  in  which  he  lived.''  He  wrote 
several  books,  and  translated  some  part  of  the  Iliad,  under  the 
title  of  *'  Eomance  of  Troy."  To  give  Mr.  Burgum  some 
idea  of  the  poetic  style  of  this  distinguished  man,  his  ances- 
tor, there  was  inserted  a  short  poem  of  his  in  the  ancient 
dialect,  entitled  "  The  Eomaunte  of  the  Cnychte ;"  and  to 
render  the  meaning  of  the  poem  more  intelligible,  there  was 
appended  a  modern  metrical  paraphrase  of  it  by  Chatterton 
himself. 

By  the  eclat  of  this  wonderful  piece  of  genealogical  and 
heraldic  ingenuity  done  for  Mr.  Burgum,  as  well  as  by  the 
occasional  exercise  in  a  more  or  less  public  manner  of  his 
talent  for  verse-making,  Chatterton,  already  recognised  as 
the  first  for  attainments  among  all  the  lads  in  Colston's 
school,  appears  to  have  won  a  kind  of  reputation  with  a  few- 
persons  of  the  pewterer's  stamp  out  of  doors— honest  people. 


186  CHATTERTON  : 

with  small  pretensions  to  literature  themselves,  but  willing  to 
encourage  a  clever  boy  whose  mother  was  in  poor  circum- 
stances. 

It  was  probably  through  the  influence  of  such  persons  that, 
after  having  been  seven  years  at  the  school,  he  was  removed 
from  it  in  July,  1767,  to  be  apprenticed  to  Mr.  John  Lam- 
bert, a  Bristol  attorney.  The  trustees  of  Colston^s  school 
paid  to  Lambert,  on  the  occasion,  a  premium  of  ten  pounds ; 
and  the  arrangement  was,  that  Chatterton  should  be  bound  to 
him  for  seven  years,  during  which  period  he  was  to  board 
and  lodge  in  Mr.  Lambert's  house,  his  mother,  however, 
undertaking  to  wash  and  mend  for  him.  There  was  no 
salary ;  but,  as  usually  happens  in  such  cases,  there  were 
probably  means  in  Bristol  by  which  a  lad  writing,  as 
Chatterton  did,  a  neat  clerk's  hand,  could  hope  to  earn,  now 
and  then,  a  few  stray  shillings.  At  any  rate,  he  had  the 
prospect  of  finding  himself,  at  the  end  of  seven  years,  in  a 
fair  way  to  be  a  Bristol  attorney. 

Lambert's  office-hours  were  from  eight  in  the  morning  till 
eight  in  the  evening,  with  an  interval  for  dinner ;  from  eight 
till  ten  in  the  evening  the  apprentice  was  at  liberty,  but  he 
was  required  to  be  home  at  his  master's  house,  which  was  at 
some  distance  from  the  office,  punctually  by  ten.  An  in- 
dignity which  he  felt  very  much,  and  more  than  once  com- 
plained of,  was  that,  by  the  household  arrangements,  which 
were  under  the  control  of  an  old  lady,  his  master's  mother, 
he  was  sent  to  take  his  meals  in  the  kitchen,  and  made  to 
sleep  with  the  footboy.  To  set  against  this,  however,  there 
was  the  advantage  of  plenty  of  spare  time  ;  for  as  Lambert's 
business  was  not  very  extensive,  the  apprentice  was  often 
left  alone  in  the  office  with  nothing  special  to  do,  and  at 
liberty  to  amuse  himself  as  he  liked.  From  copying  letters 
and  precedents,  he  could  turn  to  CamdevUs  Britannia^  an 
edition  of  which  lay  on  the  office-shelves,  to  Holinshed' s 
Chronicles,  to  SpegMs  Chaucer ,  to  Geoffrey  of  Monmouth, 
or  to  any  other  book  that  he  could  borrow  from  a  library, 
and  smuggle  in  for  his  private  recreation.  Sometimes,  also, 
the  tradition  goes,  his  master,  entering  the  office  unexpectedly. 


A   STOEY   OF   THE   YEAR    1770.  187 

would  catch  tim  writing  verses,  and  would  lecture  him 
on  the  subject.  Once  the  offence  was  still  more  serious. 
An  anonymous  abusive  letter  had  been  sent  to  Mr.  Warner, 
the  head-master  of  Colston's  school,  and  by  the  texture  of 
the  paper,  and  other  evidences,  this  letter  was  traced  to 
the  ex-Bluecoat  of  Mr.  Lambert's  office,  whose  reasons  for 
sending  it  had  probably  been  personal.  On  this  occasion 
his  master  was  so  exasperated  as  to  strike  him. 

A  young  attorney's  apprentice,  of  proud  and  sullen 
temper,  discontented  with  his  situation,  ambitious,  conscious 
of  genius,  yet  treated  as  aJbo^L-aGdjnenial  servant — such  was 
Chatterton  during  the  "iwo  years  that  foUoW^d  his  removal 
from  the  Blue-coat  School.  To  this  add  the  want  of  pocket- 
money  ;  for  busy  as  he  was  with  his  master's  work  and  his 
own  secret  exercises  in  the  way  of  literature,  it  is  still  authen- 
tically known  that  he  found  time  of  an  evening  not  only  to 
drop  in  pretty  regularly  at  his  mother's  house,  but  also  to 
do  as  other  attorneys'  apprentices  did,  and  prosecute  little 
amusements  such  as  all  apprentices  like  to  find  practicable. 
Altogether,  the  best  glimpse  we  have  of  Chatterton  in  his 
commoner  aspect  as  an  attorney's  apprentice  in  Bristol,  is 
that  which  we  get  from  a  letter  written  by  him,  during  his 
first  year  with  Mr.  Lambert,  to  a  youth  named  Baker,  who 
had  been  his  chum  at  Colston's  school,  and  had  emigrated  to 
America.  Baker  had  written  to  him  from  South  Carolina, 
informing  him,  amongst  other  things,  that  he  had  fallen  in 
love  with  an  American  belle,  of  the  name  of  Hoy  land,  whose 
charms  had  obscured  his  memory  of  the  Bristol  fair  ones  ; 
and  begging  him,  it  would  also  appear,  to  woo  the  Muses  in 
his  favour,  and  transmit  him  across  the  Atlantic  a  poem  or 
two,  to  be  presented  to  Miss  Hoyland.  Chatterton  complies, 
and  sends  -  a  long  letter,  beginning  with  a  few  amatory 
effusions  to  Miss  Hoyland,  such  as  Baker  wanted,  and  con- 
cluding thus : — 

"March  6tli,  1768. 

"Dear  Friend,— I  must  now  close  my  poetical  labours,  my  master  being 

returned  from  London,     You  write  in  a  very  entertaining  style ;  though  I  am 

afraid  mine  will  be  to  the  contrary.     Your  celebrated  Miss  Kumsey  is  going 

to  be  married  to  Mr.  Fowler,  as  he  himself  informs  me.     Pretty  children  ! 


188  CHATTERTON  : 

about  to  enter  into  the  comfortable  yoke  of  matrimony,  to  be  at  their  liberty ; 
just  d  propos  to  the  old  law,  but  out  of  the  frying-pan  into  the  fire.  For  a 
lover,  heavens  mend  him  !  but  for  a  husband,  oh,  eiicellent !  What  a  female 
Machiavel  this  Miss  Rumsey  is  !  A  very  good  mistress  of  nature,  to  discover 
a  demon  in  the  habit  of  a  parson ;  to  find  a  spirit  so  well  adapted  to  the  humour 
of  an  English  wife ;  that  is,  one  who  takes  off  his  hat  to  every  person  he 
chances  to  meet,  to  show  his  staring  horns  \  *  *  0  mirabile,  what  will  human 
nature  degenerate  into  ?  Fowler  aforesaid  declares  he  makes  a  scruple  of  con- 
science of  being  too  free  with  Miss  Rumsey  before  maiTiage.  There's  a  gal- 
lant for  you !  "Why,  a  girl  with  anything  of  the  woman  would  despise  him 
for  it.  But  no  more  of  this.  I  am  glad  you  approve  of  the  ladies  in  Charles- 
town,  and  am  obliged  to  you  for  the  compliment  of  including  me  in  your 
happiness.  My  friendship  is  as  firm  as  the  white  rock  when  the  black  waves 
war  around  it,  and  the  waters  burst  on  its  hoary  top ;  when  the  driving  wind 
ploughs  the  sable  sea,  and  the  rising  waves  aspire  to  the  clouds,  turning  with 
the  rattling  hail.  So  much  for  heroics ;  to  speak  plain  English,  I  am,  and  ever 
will  be,  your  unalterable  friend.  I  did  not  give  your  love  to  Miss  Rumsey, 
having  not  seen  her  in  private ;  and  in  public  she  will  not  speak  to  me,  because 
of  her  great  love  to  Fowler,  and  on  another  occasion.  I  have  been  violently 
in  love  these  three-and-twenty  times  since  your  departure,  and  not  a  few  times 
came  off  victorious.  I  am  obliged  to  you  for  your  curiosity,  and  shall  esteem 
it  very  much,  not  on  account  of  itself,  but  as  coming  from  you.  The  poems, 
&c,,  on  Miss  Hoyland,  I  wish  better,  for  her  sake  and  yours.  The  '  Tourna- 
ment' I  have  only  one  canto  of,  which  I  send  herewith;  the  remainder  is 
entirely  lost.  I  am,  with  the  greatest  regret,  going  to  subscribe  myself,  your 
faithful  and  constant  friend  till  death  do  us  part, 

"  Thomas  Chatterton. 
"Mr.  Baker,  Gharlestown, 
"South  Carolina." 

When. Chatterton  wrote  this  letter  he  was  fifteen  years  and 
four  months  old.  To  its  tone,  as  illustrative  of  certain  parts 
of  his  character,  we  shall  have  yet  to  allude ;  meanwhile  let 
us  attend  to  the  reference  made  in  it  to  the  Tournament,  one 
canto  of  which  is  said  to  be  sent  along  with  it.  The  poem 
here  meant  is  doubtless  the  antique  dramatic  fragment  pub- 
lished among  Chatterton's  writings  in  the  assumed  guise  of 
an  original  poem  of  the  fifteenth  century,  descriptive  of  a 
tournament  held  at  Bristol  in  the  reign  of  Edward  I.  From 
the  manner  of  the  allusion  it  is  clear  that  as  early,  as  this 
period  of  Chatterton's  life,  that  is,  before  the  close  of  the 
first  year  of  his  apprenticeship,  lie  was  in  the  habit  of 
showing  about  to  some  of  his  private  friends  poems  in  an 
antique  style,  which  he  represented  as  genuine  antiques, 
copied  from  old  parchments  in  his  possession.  It  was  not, 
however,  till  about  six  months  after  the  date  of  the  foregoing 
epistle  that  he  made  his  debut  in  the  professed  character  of 
an  antiquarian  and  proprietor  of  ancient  manuscripts,  before 
the  good  folks  of  Bristol  generally. 


A  STORY   OF   THE   YEAR   1770.  189 

In  September,  1 768,  a  new  bridge  was  opened  at  Bristol 
with  much  civic  pomp  and  ceremony.  While  the  excitement 
was  still  fresh,  the  antiquaries  of  the  town  were  startled  by 
the  appearance,  in  Felix  Farley's  Journal,  of  a  very  interest- 
ing account  of  the  ceremonies  that  had  attended  the  similar 
opening,  several  centuries  before,  of  the  old  bridge,  which 
had  just  been  superseded.  This  account,  communicated  by 
an  anonymous  correspondent  signing  himself  "Dunhelmus 
Bristoliensis,"  purported  to  be  taken  from  an  old  manuscript, 
contemporary  with  the  occurrence.  It  described  how  the  open- 
ing of  the  old  bridge  had  taken  place  on  a  "  Fridaie  ;  "  how, 
on  that  "  Fridaie,' '  the  ceremonies  had  begun  by  one  "  Master 
Greggorie  Dalbenye"  going  "  aboute  the  tolly nge  of  the  tenth 
clock,"  to  inform  "  Master  Mayor  all  thyngs  were  prepared  ;  " 
how  the  procession  to  the  bridge  had  consisted^  first,  of  "  two 
Beadils  streying  fresh  stre,"  then  of  a  man  dressed  as  "  a 
Saxon  Elderman,"  then  of  "a  mickle  strong  manne  in  armour 
carrying  a  huge  anlace  (^^  e.  sword),"  then  of  "  six  clary ons 
and  minstrels,"  then  of  "  Master  Mayor"  on  a  white  horse, 
then  of  "  the  Eldermen  and  Cittie  Brothers'^  on  sable  horses; 
and  finally,  of  ''  the  preests,  parish,  mendicant,  and  seculor, 
some  synging  Saincte  Warburgh's  song,  others  sounding 
claryons  thereto,  and  otherssome  citrialles  ; '"'  how,  when  the 
procession  had  reached  the  bridge,  the  "manne  with  the 
anlace"  took  his  station  on  a  mound  reared  in  the  middle  of 
it ;  how  the  rest  gathered  round  him,  '*  the  preestes  and 
freers,  all  in  white  albs,  making  a  most  goodlie  shewe,''  and 
singing  "  the  song  of  Saincte  Baldwyn :  "  how,  when  this 
was  done,  "  the  manne  on  the  top  threwe  with  greet  mycht 
his  anlace  into  the  see,  and  the  claryons  sounded  an  auntiant 
charge  and  forloyn  ; "  how  then  there  was  more  singing,  and, 
at  the  town- cross,  a  Latin  sermon  "  preeched  by  Ralph  de 
Blundeville :  "  and  how  the  day  was  ended  by  festivities,  the 
performance  of  the  play  of  ''The  Knyghtes  of  Bristow" 
by  the  friars  of  St.  Augustine,  and  the  lighting  of  a  great 
bonfire  on  Kynwulph  Hill. 

The  antiquaries  of  the  town  were  eager  to  know  the  anony- 


190  CHATTERTON  ! 

mous  '*  Dunhelmus  Bristoliensis  "  who  had  contributed  this 
perfectly  novel  document  to  the  archives  of  Bristol ;  and  they 
succeeded  in  identifying  him  with  Mr.  Lambert's  singular 
apprentice, — the  discoverer,  as  they  would  now  learn,  of  a 
similar  piece  of  antiquity  in  the  shape  of  a  pedigree  for  Mr. 
Burgum,  the  pewterer.  Examined,  coaxed,  and  threatened 
on  the  subject  of  his  authority,  Chatterton  prevaricated,  but  at 
last  adhered  to  the  assertion  that  the  manuscript  in  question 
was  one  of  a  collection  which  had  belonged  to  his  father,  who 
had  obtained  them  from  the  large  chest  or  coffer  in  the  muni- 
ment-room of  the  church  of  St.  Mary  Kedclife.  And  here, 
whether  owing  to  his  obstinacy  or  to  the  stupidity  of  the  in- 
quisitors, the  matter  was  allowed  to  rest. 

The  general  impression  that  followed  the  discovery  of  the 
author  of  the  communication  relative  to  the  opening  of  the 
old  bridge,  was  that  Mr.  Lambert's  apprentice  was  really  a 
very  extraordinary  lad,  who,  besides  being  a  poet  in  a  small 
way,  was  also  a  dabbler  in  antiquities,  and  had  somehow 
or  other  become  possessed,  as  he  said  himself,  of  valuable 
materials  respecting  the  history  of  Bristol.  Accordingly  he 
became,  in  some  sense,  a  local  celebrity.  Among  the  persons 
that  took  him  by  the  hand  were  one  or  two  of  some  name  and 
importance  in  Bristol — Mr.  George  Catcott,  the  partner  of 
Mr.  Burgum;  his  brother,  the  Rev.  Alexander  Catcott;  and 
Mr.  Barrett,  a  surgeon  in  good  practice.  Two  of  these  had  a 
reputation  as  literary  men.  The  Rev.  Mr.  Catcott  had  written 
a  book  in  support  of  the  Noachian  view  of  the  Deluge,  and 
was,  besides,  according  to  Chatterton's  delineations  of  him,  a 
kind  of  oracle  on  scientific  points  at  Bristol  tea-parties,  where 
"  shewing  wondering  cits  his  fossil  store,"  he  would  expound 
his  orthodox  theory  of  springs,  rocks,  mountains,  and  strata. 
What  the  reverend  Catcott  was  at  refined  tea-parties,  his 
coarser  brother,  the  pewterer,  was  at  taverns.  Chatterton 
thus  hits  him  off: — 

"  So  at  Llewellyn's  your  great  brother  sits, 
The  laughter  of  his  tributary  wits, 
Ruling  the  noisy  multitude  with  ease, — 
Empties  his  pint,  and  sputters  his  decrees." 


A   STOEY   OF   THE   YEAE  1770.  191 

Mr.  Barrett,  tlie  surgeon,  on  the  other  hand,  was  a  sedate 
professional  man,  of  repute  as  an  antiquarian,  and  known  to 
be  engaged  in  writing  a  history  of  Bristol. 

The  two  Catcotts,  Barrett,  and  Burgum,  with  some  others, 
known  either  through  their  means  or  independently  of  them- 
Mr.  Matthew  Mease,  a  vintner ;  Messrs.  Allen  and  Broderip, 
two  musicians  and  church  organists ;  the  Rev.  Mr.  Broughton; 
Mr.  Clayfield,  a  distiller,  *'  a  worthy,  generous  man ; " 
Mr.  Alcock,  a  miniature  painter;  T.  Gary,  a  pipe-maker; 
H.  Kator,  a  sugar-baker  ;  W.  Smith,  a  player ;  J.  Rudhall,  an 
apothecary's  apprentice ;  such,  so  far  as  we  can  collect  their 
names,  were  the  principal  acquaintances  and  associates  of 
Chatterton  during  his  apprenticeship  with  Mr.  Lambert. 
There  are  references  also  to  some  acquaintances  of  the  other 
sex :  Mrs.  Baker,  Mrs.  Carty,  Miss  Webb,  Miss  Sandford, 
Miss  Bush,  Miss  Thatcher,  Miss  Hill,  &c.,  not  to  omit  the 
most  conspicuous  of  all,  and  the  only  one  between  whom  and 
Chatterton  one  is  able  to  surmise  a  sentimental  relation,  that 
"  female  Machiavel,  Miss  Rumsey,"  so  spitefully  alluded  to 
in  the  letter  to  the  transatlantic  Mr.  Baker.  The  Catcotts, 
Barrett,  and  Burgum,  however,  come  most  into  notice.  On 
the  Rev.  Mr.  Catcott,  Chatterton,  we  are  to  suppose,  drops  in 
occasionally,  to  listen  to  a  prelection  on  fossils  and  the  Deluge ; 
Burgum  and  the  other  Catcott  he  may  sometimes  meet  at 
Matthew  Mease's,  where  Cattott  acts  the  chairman ;  and  from 
Barrett,  calling  on  him  at  his  surgery  once  a  week  or  so,  he 
receives  sensible  advices  as  to  the  propriety  of  making  poetry 
subordinate  to  his  profession,  as  well  as  (what  he  greatly 
prefers)  the  loan  of  medical  and  uncommon  books. 

It  is  to  this  little  public  of  heterogeneous  individuals — 
clergymen,  surgeons,  tradesmen,  vintners,  and  young  appren- 
tices like  himself — that  Chatterton  produces  his  Rowley  poems, 
and  other  antique  writings.  As  early  as  the  date  of  the 
Burgum  pedigree,  we  have  seen,  he  had  ventured  to  bring  out 
one  antique  piece,  the  "  Romaunte  of  the  Cnychte,"  by  the  so- 
called  John  de  Bergham.  To  this  had  been  added,  as  early 
as  the  commencement  of  1768,  the  "Tournament,"  the  poem 
alluded  to  in  the  letter  to  Baker;  as  well  as,  perhaps,  other 


192  CHATTERTON  : 

pieces.  Farther,  in  the  account  of  the  opening  of  the  old  hridge 
(September,  1768),  references  are  introduced  to  the  "  Songe  of 
Saincte  Warburghe,"  and  the  "  Songe  of  Saincte  Baldwynne," 
showing  that  these  antiques  must  have  been  then  extant.  Tn 
short,  there  is  evidence  that,  before  the  conclusion  of  his  six- 
teenth year,  Chatterton  had  produced  at  least  a  portion  of  his 
alleged  antiques.  But  the  year  that  followed,  or  from  the 
close  of  1768  to  the  close  of  1769,  seems  to  have  been  his 
most  prolific  period  in  this  respect.  In  or  about  the  winter  of 
1768 — 9,  that  is,  when  he  had  just  completed  his  sixteenth 
year,  he  produced,  in  the  circle  of  his  friends  above  mentioned, 
his  ballad  of  "  The  Bristowe  Tragedie ;  "  his  "  tragical  inter- 
lude "  of  "  ^Ua,''  in  itself  a  large  poem  ;  his  "  Elinoure  and 
Juga,"  a  fine  pastoral  poem  of  the  wars  of  the  Eoses ;  and 
numerous  other  pieces  of  all  forms  and  lengths,  in  the  same 
antique  spelling.  Then,  also,  did  he  first  distinctly  give  the 
account  of  those  pieces  to  which  he  ever  afterwards  adhered — 
to  wit,  that  they  were,  for  the  greater  part,  the  compositions 
of  Thomas  Kowley,  a  priest  of  Bristol  of  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury, many  of  whose  manuscripts,  preserved  in  the  muni- 
ment-room of  the  church  of  St.  Mary,  had  come  into  his 
hands. 

The  Catcotts  were  the  persons  most  interested  in  the  re- 
covered manuscripts;  and  whenever  Chatterton  had  a  new 
poem  of  Rowley's  on  his  hands,  it  was  usually  to  Mr.  George 
Catcott  that  he  first  gave  a  copy  of  it.  To  Mr.  Barrett,  on 
the  other  hand,  he  usually  imparted  such  scraps  of  ancient 
prose  records,  deeds,  accounts  of  old  churches,  &c.,  as  were 
likely  to  be  of  use  to  that  gentleman  in  preparing  his  history 
of  Bristol.  So  extensive,  in  fact,  were,  the  surgeon's  obliga- 
tions to  the  young  man,  that  he  seems  to  have  thought  it 
impossible  to  requite  them  otherwise  than  by  a  pecuniary 
recompense.  Accordingly,  there  is  evidence  of  an  occasional 
guinea  or  half-guinea  having  been  transferred  from  the  pocket 
of  Mr.  Barrett  to  that  of  Chatterton  on  the  score  of  literary 
assistance  rendered  him  in  the  progress  of  his  work.  From 
the  Catcotts,  too,  Chatterton  seems,  on  similar  grounds,  to 
have  now  and  then  obtained  something.     That  they  were  not 


A  STORY  OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  193 

SO  liberal  as  they  might  have  been,  however,  the  following 
bill  in  Chatterton's  handwriting  will  show : — 

"  Mr.  G.  Catcott, 

"  To  the  Executors  of  T.  Rowley. 
"  To  pleasure  reed,  in  readg.  his  Historic  works  .  .  £5     5     0 
his  Poetic  works  .  .  .  £5     5     0 


£10  10     0" 

Whether  tlie  above  was  splenetically  sent  to  Catcott,  or 
whether  it  was  only  drawn  up  by  Chatterton  in  a  cashless 
moment  by  way  of  frolic,  is  not  certain ;  the  probability,  how- 
ever, is,  that,  if  it  was  sent,  the  pewterer  did  not  think  it 
necessary  to  discharge  it.  Yet  he  was  not  such  a  hard  sub- 
ject as  his  partner,  Burgum,  whom  Chatterton  (no  doubt  after 
sufficient  trial)  represents  as  stinginess  itself. 

But  it  was  not  only  as  a  young  man  of  extensive  antiqua- 
rian knowledge  and  of  decided  literary  talent  that  Chatterton 
was  known  in  Bristol.  As  the  transcriber  of  the  Rowley 
poems,  and  the  editor  of  curious  pieces  of  information,  derived 
from  ancient  manuscripts  which  he  was  understood  to  have 
in  his  possession,  the  Catcotts,  Barrett,  and  the  rest,  had  no 
fault  to  find  with  him ;  but  there  were  other  phases  in  which 
lie  appeared,  by  no  means  so  likely  to  recommend  him  to  their 
favour,  or  to  the  favour  of  such  other  influential  persons  in  the 
community  as  might  have  been  disposed  to  patronise  modesty 
in  combination  with  youth  and  literature. 

In  a  town  of  70,000  inhabitants  (which  was  about  the 
population  of  Bristol  eighty  years  ago)  it  must  be  remembered 
that  all  the  public  charaQ-ers  are  marked  men.  The  mayor, 
the  various  aldermen  and  common-coun oilmen,  the  city  clergy- 
men, the  chief  gi'ocers,  bankers,  and  tradesmen,  the  teachers 
of  the  public  schools,  &c.,  are  all  recognised  as  they  pass 
along  the  streets  ;  and  their  peculiarities,  physical  and  moral, 
such  as  the  red  nose  of  Alderman  Such-an-one,  the  wheezy 
voice  of  the  Eev.  Such-another,  and  the  blustering  self- 
importance  of  citizen  Such-a-third,  are  perfectly  familiar  to 
the  civic  imagination.  Now,  it  is  the  most  natural  of  all 
things  for  a  young  man  in  such  a  town,  just  arrived  at  a 
tolerable  conceit  of  himself,  and  determined  to  have  a  place 

0 


194  CHATTERTON  : 

some  day  in  Mr.  Craik's  "  Pursuit  of  Knowledge  under  diffi- 
culties," to  be  seized  with  a  tremendous  disrespect  for  every- 
thing locally  sacred,  and  to  delight  in  promulgating  it.  What 
nonsense  they  do  talk  in  the  town-council ;  what  a  miserable 
set  of  mercantile  rogues  are  the  wealthy  citizens ;  what  an 
absence  of  liberality  and  high  general  intelligence  there  is 
in  the  whole  procedure  of  the  community — these  are  the 
common-places  (often,  it  must  be  confessed,  true  enough) 
through  which  the  high-spirited  young  native  of  a  middle- 
class  British  town  must  almost  necessarily  pass,  on  his  way 
to  a  higher  appreciation  of  men  and  things.  Through  the 
sorrows  of  Lichfield,  the  Lichfield  youth  realizes  how  it  is 
that  all  creation  groaneth  and  travaileth  ;  and  pinched  by  the 
inconveniences  of  Dundee,  the  aspirant  who  is  there  nursed 
into  manhood  turns  down  his  shirt- collar  at  all  things,  and 
takes  a  Byronic  view  of  the  entire  universe. 

Chatterton  was  specially  liable  to  this  discontent  with  all 
around  him.  Of  a  dogged,  sullen,  and  passionate  disposition, 
not  without  a  considerable  spice  of  malice  ;  treated  as  a  boy, 
yet  with  a  brain  consciously  the  most  powerful  in  Bristol ; 
sadly  in  want  of  pocket-money  for  purposes  more  or  less 
questionable,  and  having  hardly  any  means  of  procuring  it — 
he  took  his  revenge  out  in  satire  against  all  that  was  respect- 
able in  Bristol.  If  Mr.  Thomas  Harris,  then  the  Eight  Wor- 
shipful Mayor  of  the  city,  passed  him  on  the  pavement,  either 
ignorant  what  a  youth  of  genius  he  was  pushing  aside,  or 
looking  down  somewhat  askance,  as  a  mayor  will  do  at  an 
attorney's  apprentice  that  will  not  take  off  his  hat  when  he  is 
expected,  the  thought  that  probably  arose  in  his  breast  was, 
**  You  are  a  purse-proud  fool,  Mr.  Mayor,  and  I  have  more 
sense  in  my  little  finger  than  you  have  in  your  whole  body." 
If  there  was  a  civic  dinner,  and  Chatterton  was  told  of  it,  the 
remark  would  be,  what  feeding  there  would  be  among  the 
aldermen  and  city  brothers ;  what  guzzling  of  claret ;  and 
what  after-dinner  speeches  by  fellows  that  could  not  pronounce 
their  H's,  and  hardly  knew  how  to  read.  If  he  chanced  to 
sit  in  church,  hearing  the  Rev.  Dr.  Cutts  Barton,  then  Dean 
of  Bristol,  preach,  what  would  pass  in  his  mind  would  be, 


i 


A   STORY   OF   THE   YEAR   1770.  195 

"  You  are  a  drowsy  old  rogue,  Cutts,  and  have  no  more  re- 
ligion in  you  than  a  sausage."  And  even  when  Newton,  the 
Bishop  of  the  diocese,  distinguished  prelate  as  he  was,  made 
his  appearance  in  the  pulpit,  he  would  not  be  safe  from  the 
excoriations  of  this  young  critic  in  the  distant  pew.  Chatter- 
ton's  own  friends  and  acquaintances,  too,  came  in  for  their 
share  of  his  sarcasms.  Lambert,  we  believe,  he  hated  ;  and 
we  have  seen  how  he  could  wreak  a  personal  grudge  on  an 
old  teacher.  The  Kev.  Mr.  Catcott,  not  a  bad  fellow  in  the 
main,  he  soon  set  down,  in  his  own  private  opinion,  as  a 
narrow-minded  parson,  with  no  force  or  philosophy,  conceited 
with  his  reputation  at  tea-parties,  and  a  dreadful  bore  with  his 
fossils  and  his  theory  of  the  Deluge.  His  brother,  the  un- 
clerical  Catcott,  again,  had  probably  more  wit  and  vigour,  but 
dogmatised  insufferably  over  his  beer ;  Burgum  was  a  vain, 
stingy,  ungrammatical  goose;  and  Mr.  Barrett,  with  all  his  good 
intentions,  was  too  fond  of  giving  common-place  advices.  In 
short,  Bristol  was  a  vile  place,  where  originality  or  genius,  or 
even  ordinary  culture  and  intelligence,  had  no  chance  of  being 
appreciated ;  and  to  spend  one's  existence  there  would  be  but 
a  life-long  attempt  to  teach  a  certain  class  of  animals  the 
value  and  the  beauty  of  pearls  ! 

Poor  unhappy  youth !  how,  through  the  mist  and  din  of 
eighty  years  past  and  gone  since  tlien,  I  recognise  thee  walk- 
ing in  the  winter  evenings  of  1769-70,  through  the  dark 
streets  of  Bristol,  or  out  into  its  dark  environs,  ruminating 
such  evil  thoughts  as  these !  And  what,  constituting  myself 
for  the  moment  the  mouthpiece  of  all  that  society  has  since 
pronounced  on  thy  case,  should  I,  leaping  back  over  long 
years  to  place  myself  at  thy  side,  whisper  to  thee  by  way  of 
counsel  or  reproach  ? — 

"  Persist ;  be  content ;  be  more  modest;  think  less  of  for- 
bidden indulgences ;  give  up  telling  lies ;  attend  to  your 
master's  business ;  and  if  you  will  cherish  the  fire  of  genius, 
and  become  a  poet  and  a  man  of  name,  like  the  Johnsons, 
the  Goldsmiths,  the  Churchills,  and  others  whom  you  think 
yourself  born  to  equal  or  surpass,  at  least  study  patience,  have 
faith  in  honourable  courses,  and  realize,  at)ove  all,  that  wealth 

02 


196  CHATTEllTON : 

and  fame  are  vanity,  and  that  whether  you  succeed  or  fail  it 
will  be  all  the  same  a  hundred  years  after  this." 

" Easily  said,"  thou  wouldst  answer;  "cheaply  advised! 
I  also  could  speak  as  you  do  ;  if  your  soul  were  in  my  soul's 
stead,  I  could  heap  up  words  against  you,  and  shake  mine 
head  at  you.  That  the  present  will  pass,  and  that  a  hundred 
years  hence  all  the  tragedy  or  all  the  farce  will  have  been 
done  and  over — true  ;  I  know  it.  Nevertheless  I  know  also 
that  minute  by  minute,  hour  by  hour,  day  by  day,  the  present 
must  be  moved  through,  and  exhausted  !  '  A  hundred  years 
after  this  !'  Did  not  Manlius,  the  Roman,  know  it;  and  yet 
was  there  not  a  moment  in  the  history  of  the  world — a  moment 
to  be  fully  felt  and  gone  through  by  Manlius — when,  flung 
from  the  Tarpeian  rock,  he,  yet  living,  hung  halfway  between 
his  gaping  executioners  above  and  his  ruddy  death  among  the 
stones  below  ?  '  A  hundred  years  after  this  !'  Pompeius,  the 
Roman,  knew  it ;  and  yet  was  there  not  a  moment  in  the 
history  of  the  world — a  moment  fully  to  be  endured  by 
Pompeius — when,  reading  in  the  treacherous  boat,  he  sat  half- 
way between  the  ship  that  bore  his  destinies  and  his  funeral 
pile  on  the  Libyan  shore  ?  Centuries  back  in  the  past  these 
moments  now  lie  engulphed ;  but  what  is  that  to  me  ?  It 
is  my  turn  now  ;  here  I  am,  wretched  in  this  beastly  Bristol, 
where  Savage  was  allowed  to  starve  in  prison  ;  and,  by  the 
very  fact  that  I  live,  I  have  a  right  to  my  solicitude !" 

Obstinate  boy !  is  there  then  aught  that  can  still,  with  some 
show  of  sense,  be  advised  to  you  ?  Seek  a  friend.  Leave 
the  Catcotts,  lay  and  clerical,  the  Burgums,  the  Barretts,  the 
Matthew  Meases,  and  the  rest  of  them,  and  seek  some  one 
true  friend,  such  as  surely  even  Bristol  can  supply,  of  about 
the  same  age  as  yourself,  or,  what  were  better,  somewhat  older. 
See  him  daily,  walk  with  him,  smoke  with  him,  laugh  with 
him,  discuss  religion  with  him,  hear  his  experiences,  show 
your  poetry  to  him,  and,  above  all,  make  a  clean  breast  to  him 
of  your  various  delinquencies.  Or,  more  efficient  perhaps 
still,  fall  really  in  love.  Avoid  the  Miss  Rumseys,  and  find 
out  some  beauty  of  a  better  kind,  to  whom,  with  or  without 
hope,  you  can  vow  the  future  of  your  noblest  heart.     Find 


A   STORY   OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  l97 

her ;  walk  beneatK  her  window ;  catch  glimpses  of  her  ; 
dream  of  her ;  if  fortune  favours,  woo  her,  and  (true  you  are 
but  seventeen !)  win  her.  Bristol  will  then  be  a  paradise ;  its 
sky  will  be  lightsome,  its  streets  beautiful,  its  mayor  tolerable, 
its  clergy  respectable,  and  all  its  warehouses  palaces  ! 

Is  this  also  nonsense  ?  Well,  then,  my  acquaintance  with 
general  biography  enables  me  to  tell  you  of  one  particular 
family  at  this  moment  living  in  Bristol,  with  which  it  might 
be  well  for  you  to  get  acquainted.  Mr.  Barrett  might  be  able 
to  introduce  you.  The  family  I  mean  is  that  of  the  Mores, 
five  sisters,  who  keep  a  boarding-school  for  young  ladies  in 
Park-street,  "  the  most  flourishing  establishment  of  its  kind 
in  the  west  of  England."  The  Miss  Mores,  as  you  know,  are 
praised  by  all  the  mothers  in  Bristol  as  extremely  clever  and 
accomplished  young  women  ;  and  one  of  them,  Miss  Hannah, 
is,  like  yourself,  a  writer  of  verses,  and,  like  yourself,  destined 
to  literary  celebrity.  Now  I  do  not  wish  to  be  mischievous ; 
but  seeing  that  posterity  will  wish  that  you  two,  living  as  you 
did  in  the  same  town,  should  at  least  have  met  and  spoken 
with  each  other,  might  1  suggest  a  notion  to  you  ?  Could  you 
not  elope  with  Hannah  More?  True,  she  is  seven  years 
your  senior,  extremely  sedate,  and  the  very  last  person  in  the 
world  to  be  guilty  of  anynonsense  with  an  attorney's  appren- 
tice. Nevertheless,  try.  Just  think  of  the  train  of  con- 
sequences— the  whole  boarding-school  in  a  flutter ;  all  Bristol 
scandalised ;  paragraphs  in  Felix  Farley's  Journal ;  and  pos- 
terity effectually  cheated  of  two  things^  the  tragic  termination 

of  your  own  life,  and  the  admirable  old  maidenhood  of  hers ! 
***** 

Chatterton  did  not  conceal  his  contempt  from  the  very 
persons  it  was  most  likely  to  offend.  Known  not  only  as 
a  transcriber  of  ancient  English  poetry,  but  also  as  a  poet  in 
his  own  person,  he  began  to  support  his  reputation  in  the 
latter  character  by  producing  from  time  to  time,  along  with  his 
Eowley  poems,  certain  lengthy  compositions  of  his  own  in 
a  modern  satirical  vein.  In  these  compositions,  which  were 
written  after  the  manner  of  Churchill,  there  was  the  strangest 
possible  jumble  of  crude  Whig  politics  and  personal  scurrility 


198  CHATTERTON  : 

against  local  notabilities.     What  effect  tliey  were  likely  to 

have  on  Chatterton's  position  in  his  native  town,   may  be 

inferred  from  a  specimen  or  two.  How  would  Broderip,  the 
organist,  like  this  ? — 

*•  While  Broderip's  humdrum  symphonies  of  flats 
Eival  the  harmony  of  midnight  cats." 

Or  the  lay  Catcott  this  allusion  to  a  professional  feat  of  his  in 
laying  the  topstone  of  a  spire  ? — 

"  Catcott  is  very  fond  of  talk  and  fame — 
His  wish  a  perpetuity  of  name ; 
Which  to  procure,  a  pewter  altar 's  made 
To  bear  his  name  and  signify  his  trade ; 
In  pomp  burlesqued  the  rising  spire  to  head, 
To  tell  futurity  a  pewterer  's  dead." 

And  how  could  the  clerical  Catcott  like  this  reference  to  his 
orthodoxy  ? — 

"Might  we  not,  Catcott,  then  infer  from  hence 
Your  zeal  for  Scriptare  hath  devoured  your  sense?" 

Or  what  would  the  mayor  say  to  this  ? — 

"  Let  Han-is  wear  his  self-sufficient  air, 
Nor  dare  remark,  for  Harris  is  a  mayor." 

Or  the  civic  dignity  of  Bristol  generally  to  this  ? — 

"  *Tis  doubtful  if  her  aldermen  can  read : 
This  of  a  certainty  the  muse  may  tell, 
None  of  her  common-councilmen  can  spell." 

Clearly  enough  an  attorney's  apprentice  that  was  in  the 
habit  of  showing  about  such  verses  was  not  in  the  way  to 
procure  patronage  and  goodwill.  If,  however,  any  of  his 
friends  remonstrated  with  him,  his  answer  was  ready : — 

te  Damn'd  narrow  notions,  tending  to  disgrace 
The  boasted  reason  of  the  human  race  ! 
Bristol  may  keep  her  prudent  maxims  still ; 
But  know,  my  saving  friends,  I  never  will. 
The  composition  of  my  soul  is  made 
Too  great  for  servile,  avaricious  trade ; 
When,  raving  in  the  lunacy  of  ink, 
I  catch  the  pen,  and  publish  what  I  think." 

Accordingly  Chatterton  continued  to  support,  in  the  eyes  of 
the  portion  of  the  community  of  Bristol  that  knew  him,  a  two- 
fold character — that  on  the  one  hand  of  an  enthusiastic  youth 
with  much  antiquarian  knowledge,  the  possessor   of  many 


F 


A  STORY   OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  199 


antique  manuscripts,  chiefly  poetry  of  the  fifteenth  century  ; 
and  that  on  the  other  of  an  ill-conditioned  boy  of  spiteful 
temper,  the  writer  of  somewhat  clever  but  very  scurrilous 
verses.  Nay,  more,  it  was  observable  that  the  latter  character 
was  growing  upon  him,  apparently  at  the  expense  of  the 
former;  for  while,  up  to  his  seventeenth  year  (1768-9),  his 
chief  recreation  seemed  to  be  in  his  antiques  and  Eowley 
MSS.,  after  that  date  he  seemed  to  throw  his  antiques  aside, 
and  devote  all  his  time  to  imitations  of  the  satires  of  Churchill, 
under  such  names  as  The  ConsuUad,  Kew  Gardens,  &c.  And 
here  the  reader  must  permit  me  a  little  Essay  or  disquisitional 
Interleaf  on  the  character  and  writings  of  Chatterton, 


All  thinking  persons  have  now  agreed  to  abandon  that 
summary  method  of  dealing  with  human  character  according 
to  which  unusual  and  eccentric  courses  of  action  are  attributed 
to  mere  caprices  on  the  part  of  the  individuals  concerned — 
mere  obstinate  determinations  to  go  out  of  the  common 
route. 

"  The  dog,  to  gain  some  private  ends, 
"Went  mad,  and  bit  the  man," 

is  a  maxim  less  in  repute  than  it  once  was.  In  such  cases  as 
that  of  Chatterton,  it  is  now  believed,  deeper  causes  are 
always  operating  than  the  mere  wish  to  deceive  people,  and 
make  a  figure. 

Now,  in  the  case  of  Chatterton,  it  appears  to  us,  we  must 
first  of  all  take  for  granted  an  extraordinary  natural  precocity 
or  prematurity  of  the  faculties.  We  are  aware  that  there  is 
a  prejudice  against  the  use  of  this  hypothesis.  But  why 
should  it  be  so?  How  otherwise  can  we  represent  to  our- 
selves the  cause  of  that  diversity  which  we  see  in  men  than 
by  going  deeper  than  all  that  we  know  of  pedigree,  and  con- 
ceiving the  birth  of  every  new  soul  to  be,  as  it  were,  a  distinct 
creative  act  of  the  unseen  Spirit  ?  That  now,  in  some  War- 
wickshire village,  the  birth  should  be  a  Shakespeare ;  and  that, 
again,  in  the  poor  posthumous  child  of  a  dissipated  Bristol 
choir-singer,  the  tiny  body  should  be  shaken  by  the  surcharge 


200  CHATTERTON  : 

of  soul  within  it,  are  not  miracles  in  themselves,  but  only 
variations  in  the  great  standing  miracle  that  there  should  be 
birth  at  all.  Nor  with  the  idea  of  precocity  is  it  necessary 
to  associate  that  either  of  disease  or  of  insanity.  There  was 
nothing  in  Chatterton  to  argue  disease  in  the  ordinary  sense, 
or  to  indicate  that,  had  he  lived,  he  might  not,  like  Pope  or 
Tasso,  who  were  also  precocious,  have  gone  on  steadily  in- 
creasing in  ability  till  the  attainment  of  a  sound  old  age. 
And  though  it  seems  certain  that  there  was  a  tendency  to  * 
madness  in  the  Chatterton  blood — Chatterton's  sister,  Mrs. 
Newton,  having  afterwards  had  an  attack  of  insanity — we 
think  that  the  use  of  this  fact  by  Southey  and  others  to 
explain  the  tenor  of  Chatterton's  life,  has  been  too  hasty  and 
inconsiderate.  A  medical  friend  of  ours  avers  that  he  never 
knew  a  man  of  genius  who  had  not  some  aunt  or  other  in 
a  lunatic  asylum,  or  at  least  fit  for  one ;  and  so  long  as  we 
can  account  for  Chatterton's  singularities  in  any  other  way, 
we  see  no  reason,  any  more  than  in  the  similar  instance  of 
Charles  Lamb,  why  ^ve  should  attribute  them  to  what  was  at 
the  utmost  only  a  dormant,  or  possibly  about  to  be  developed, 
taint  of  madness  in  his  constitution. 

Assuming,  then,  that  Chatterton,  without  being  either  a 
mere  lusus  Jiaturce,  or  insane,  was  simply  a  child  of  very 
extraordinary  endowments,  we  would  point  out,  as  the  pre- 
dominant feature  in  his  character,  his  remarkable  veneration 
for  the  antique.  In  the  boyhood  even  of  Sir  Walter  Scott, 
bom  as  he  was  in  the  very  midst  of  ballads  and  traditions,  we 
see  no  manifestation  of  a  love  of  the  past  and  the  historic 
nearly  so  strong  as  that  which  possessed  Chatterton  from  his 
infancy.  The  earliest  form  in  which  this  constitutional  pecu- 
liarity appeared  in  him  seems  to  have  been  a  fondness  for  the 
ecclesiastical  antiquities  of  his  native  city,  and,  above  all,  an 
attachment  to  the  old  Gothic  Church  of  St.  Mary  RedclifFe. 

Some  time  ago  we  saw  in  a  provincial  Scottish  newspaper 
an  obituary  notice  of  a  poor  idiot  named  John  M'Bey,  who 
had  been  for  about  sixty  years  a  prominent  character  in  the 
village  of  Huntly,  Aberdeenshire.  Where  the  poor  creature 
had  been  born,  no  one  knew;   he   had  been  found,  when 


A  STORY   OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  201 

apparently  about  ten  years  old,  wandering  among  tlie  Gartly 
Hills,  and  had  been  brouglit  by  some  country  people  into  tlie 
village.  Here,  "  supported  by  the  kindness  of  several  families, 
at  whose  kitchen-tables  he  regularly  took  his  place  at  one  or 
other  of  the  meals  of  the  day,"  he  continued  to  reside  ever 
after  a  conspicuous  figure  in  the  schoolboy  recollections  of  all 
the  inhabitants  for  more  than  half  a  century.  The  "  shaggy 
carroty  head,  the  vacant  stare,  the  idle  trots  and  aimless  walks 
of  '  Jock,'  could  yet,"  said  the  notice,  "  be  recalled  in  a  mo- 
ment'^  by  all  that  knew  him.  "At  an  early  period  of  his 
history,'^  proceeded  the  notice,  *'he  had  formed  a  strong- 
affection  for  the  bell  in  the  old  ruined  church  of  Euthven,  in 
the  parish  of  Caimie ;  and  many  were  the  visits  he  paid  to 
that  object  of,  to  him,  surpassing  interest.  Having  dubbed  it 
with  the  name  of  '  Wow,'  he  embraced  every  opportunity  at 
funerals  to  get  a  pull  of  the  rope,  interpreting  the  double 
peals,  in  his  own  significant  language,  to  mean,  '  Come  hame, 
come  hame.'  Every  funeral  going  to  that  churchyard  was 
known  to  him;  and,  till  his  old  age,  he  was  generally  the 
first  person  that  appeared  on  the  ground.  The  emblems  of 
his  favourite  bell,  in  bright  yellow,  were  sewed  on  his  gar- 
ments ;  and  woe  to  the  school-boy  that  would  utter  a  word  in 
depreciation  of  his  favourite.  When  near  his  end,  he  was 
asked  how  he  felt.  He  said  '  he  was  ga'in  awa'  to  the  woiv, 
nae  to  come  back  again.'  After  his  death,  he  was  laid  in  his 
favourite  burying-place,  within  sound  of  his  cherished  bell." 

Do  not  despise  this  little  story,  reader.  To  our  mind  it 
illustrates  much.  As  this  poor  idiot,  deban-ed  from  all  the 
general  concerns  of  life,  and  untaught  in  other  people's  tenets, 
had  invented  a  religion  for  himself,  setting  up  as  a  central 
object  in  his  own  narrow  circle  of  images  and  fancies  an  old 
ruined  belfry,  which  had  somehow  (who  knows  through  what 
horror  of  maternity  ?)  caught  his  sense  of  mystery,  clinging  to 
this  object  with  the  whole  tenacity  of  his  affections,  and  even 
devising  symbols  by  which  it  might  be  ever  present  to  him ; 
so,  with  more  complex  and  less  rude  accompaniments,  does 
the  precocious  boy  of  Bristol  seem  to  have  related  himself  to 
the  Gothic  fabric  near  which  he  first  saw  the  light.     This 


202  CHATTERTON : 

cliiirch  was  his  fetich,  his  "wow."  It  was  through  it,  as 
through  a  metaphorical  gateway,  that  his  imagination  worked 
itself  back  into  the  great  field  of  the  past,  so  as  to  expatiate 
on  the  ancient  condition  of  his  native  "  Brjstowe  "  and  the 
whole  olden  time  of  England. 

This  is  no  fancy  of  ours.  "  Chatterton,"  says  one  of  his  ear- 
liest acquaintances,  the  Mr.  William  Smith  above  mentioned, 
"  was  particularly  fond  of  walking  in  the  fields,  particularly 
in  KedclifFe  meadows,  and  of  talking  of  his  manuscripts,  and 
sometimes  reading  them  there.  There  was  one  spot  in  parti- 
cular, full  in  view  of  the  church,  in  which  he  seemed  to  take 
peculiar  delight.  He  would  frequently  lay  himself  down,  fix 
his  eyes  upon  the  church,  and  seem  as  if  he  were  in  a  kind  of 
trance ;  then,  on  a  sudden,  he  would  tell  me,  *  That  steeple 
was  burnt  down  by  lightning ;  that  was  the  place  where  they 
formerly  acted  plays.' "  To  the  same  efi*ect,  also,  many  allu- 
sions to  the  Church  in  the  Eowley  poems ;  thus : — 

*•  Thou  seest  this  maestrie  of  a  human  hand, 
The  pride  of  Bristowe  and  the  western  land." 

And  here  we  may  remind  the  reader  of  a  circumstance  men- 
tioned above,  namely,  that  the  ancestors  of  Chatterton  had, 
for  a  hundred  and  fifty  years,  been  sextons  of  this  same  Church 
of  St.  Mary  Redcliffe,  and  that  the  office  had  only  passed 
out  of  the  family  on  the  death  of  his  father's  elder  brother, 
John.  Chatterton' s  father,  too,  it  should  be  remembered, 
was  a  choir-singer  in  the  church ;  and  Chatterton  himself, 
while  a  child,  had,  in  virtue  of  old  family  right  and  proximity 
of  residence,  had  the  run  of  its  aisles  and  galleries.  Can  it 
be,  we  would  ask  the  physiological  philosophers,  that  a 
veneration  for  the  edifice  of  St.  Mary  Eedclifie,  and  for  all 
connected  with  it,  had  thus  come  down  in  the  Chatterton 
blood ;  that,  as  it  were,  the  defunct  old  Chattertons,  Johns 
and  Thomases  in  their  series,  who  had,  in  times  gone  by, 
paced  along  the  interior  of  the  church,  jangling  its  ponderous 
keys,  brushing  away  its  cobwebs,  and  talking  with  its  stony 
effigies  of  knights  and  saints  buried  below,  had  thus  ac- 
quired, in   gradually-increasing    mass,   a   store   of   antique 


p 


A  STORY    OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  203 


associations,  to  be  transmitted,  as  a  fatal  heritage,  to  tlie  un- 
happy youth  in  whom  their  line  was  to  become  extinct  and 
immortal  ?     We  can  suppose  that,  in  part,  this  was  the  case. 

But  Chatterton's  disposition  towards  the  antique  did  not 
remain  a  mere  fetichistic  instinct  of  veneration  for  the  relic 
his  ancestors  had  guarded.  From  his  very  boyhood  he 
entered  with  all  the  zeal  of  a  reader  and  intelligent  inquirer 
into  the  service  of  his  hereditary  feeling.  It  would  not  be 
long,  for  example,  before,  passing  from  the  edifice  to  its 
history,  as  recorded  in  the  annals  of  Bristol,  he  would  learn 
to  pronounce,  with  indefinable  reverence,  the  name  of  its 
founder,  William  Canynge,  the  Bristol  merchant  of  the 
fifteenth  century.  Whatever  particulars  were  to  be  gleaned 
from  books  regarding  the  life  of  this  notable  personage,  must 
have  been  familiar  to  Chatterton  long  before  he  ceased  to  be 
a  blue-coat  scholar.  How  Canynge  had  been  such  a  wealthy 
man,  that,  according  to  William  of  Worcester,  he  was 
owner  of  ten  vessels,  and  gave  employment  to  one  hundred 
mariners,  as  well  as  to  one  hundred  artificers  on  shore ;  how 
he  had  been  as  munificent  as  he  was  wealthy  ;  how  he  had 
been  mayor  of  Bristol  in  1431,  and  four  separate  times  after- 
wards ;  how  he  and  the  town  had  become  involved  in  the 
Wars  of  the  Eoses,  and  how,  on  the  accession  of  Edward 
lY.,  he  had  made  the  peace  of  the  town  by  paying  a  fine  to 
that  monarch ;  and  how,  finally,  he  had  become  a  priest  in 
his  old  age,  and  devoted  a  large  part  of  his  fortune  to  the 
erection,  or  rather  re-construction,  of  the  Church  of  St.  Mary 
Bedcliffe — all  this  knowledge,  easily  accessible  to  an  inquir- 
ing Bristol  boy,  Chatterton  would  collect  and  ponder. 

Chatterton,  however,  was  not  merely  an  inquisitive  lad ; 
he  was  a  young  poet,  full  of  enthusiasm  and  constructive 
talent.  Eence,  not  satisfied  with  a  meagre  outline  of  the 
story  of  Canynge,  as  it  could  be  derived  from  the  chronicles 
of  Bristol,  he  set  himself  to  fill  up  the  outirne  by  conjectures 
and  synchronisms,  so  as  to  make  clear  for  himself  "Canynge's 
Life  and  Times,"  as  a  luminous  little  spot  in  the  general  dark- 
ness of  the  English  past.  And  here  comes  in  the  story  of 
the  old  parchments. 


204  CHATTERTON : 

Over  tlie  north  porcli  of  St.  Maiy^s  Eedcliffe  was  a  room 
known  as  "the  muniment-room."  Here,  at  the  beginning 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  there  lay  six  or  seven  locked 
chests,  which  were  understood  to  contain  old  deeds  and 
other  writings.  One  of  the  chests  was  traditionally  known 
as  "Mr.  Canynge's  coffer."  The  keys  of  this  chest  had 
been  long  lost ;  and  when,  in  the  year  1727,  it  was  deemed 
expedient  to  secure  some  title-deeds  that  were  believed  to  be 
contained  in  it,  a  locksmith  was  employed  to  break  it  open. 
Such  documents  as  were  thought  of  importance  were  then 
removed,  and  the  rest  were  left  in  the  open  chest  as  of  no 
value.  The  other  chests  were  similarly  treated.  Accord- 
ingly, parcels  of  the  remaining  contents  were  subsequently, 
from  time  to  time,  carried  off  by  various  persons ;  and,  in 
particular,  it  was  remembered  that  when  John  Chatterton 
was  sexton,  his  brother,  the  choir-singer  and  teacher  of  Pyle- 
street  school,  had  carried  off  a  quantity  of  them  to  be  used 
as  book-covers  and  for  other  such-like  purposes.  A  bundle 
of  these  parchments  remained  in  the  possession  of  Mrs. 
Chatterton  after  her  husband's  death,  and  such  of  them  as 
had  not  been  previously  snipped  into  thread-papers  came 
into  Chatterton's  hands. 

What  these  old  documents  really  contained,  we  have  no 
means  of  knowing.  That  some  of  them  may  have  been 
papers  of  historical  value,  is  not  improbable.  It  is  certain, 
at  least,  that  they  interested  Chatterton,  that  the  possession 
of  them  nourished  his  sense  of  the  antique,  and  that  he 
learnt  to  decipher  parts  of  them,  catching  out  old  bits  of 
Latin  phraseology,  and  such  like,  which  he  mis-wrote  in 
copying.  We  may  eVen  go  farther,  and  surmise  that  out  of 
those  papers  he  may  have  derived  hints  that  were  of  use 
to  him  in  his  attempt  to  represent  the  circumstances  of 
Canynge's  life.  They  may  have  helped  him,  for  example,  to 
appropriate  names  for  some  of  those  fictitious  or  semi- 
fictitious  personages  whom  he  thought  proper  to  group 
around  Canynge  in  that  tableau  or  historical  romance  of 
"  Bristol  in  the  Fifteenth  Century,"  with  the  construction  of 
which  he  regaled  himself. 


A   STORY   OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  205 

Of  these  secondary  dramatis  personce^  grouped  In  Hs  imagi- 
nation around  Canynge,  the  most  important  was  a  supposed 
priest  called  Thomas  Kowley,  or  more  fully,  "  Thomas 
Eowlie,  parish-preeste  of  St.  John's,  in  the  city  of  Bristol." 
The  relations  between  Canynge  and  Eowley,  as  bodied  forth 
in  Chatterton's  conception,  were  as  follows : — Eowley,  who 
had  been  at  school  in  Bristol  along  with  CanyngQ,  became 
chaplain  to  Canynge's  father.  On  that  old  gentleman's  death, 
Canynge,  then  a  rising  young  merchant,  continued  the  family 
patronage  to  his  schoolmate,  and  employed  him,  amongst 
other  things,  in  collecting  manuscripts  and  drawings  for  him. 
About  the  time  of  Canynge's  first  mayoralty,  in  1431, 
Eowley  was  settled  as  parish-priest  of  St.  John's ;  and  from 
that  time  forward,  for  a  period  of  thirty  or  forty  years,  the 
two  men  continued  on  terms  of  the  most  friendly  and  cordial 
intimacy — Canynge,  the  wealthiest  man  in  the  west  of 
England,  and  the  civic  soul  of  Bristol,  living  as  a  liberal 
merchant-prince  in  a  noble  residence;  Eowley,  a  man  of 
books  and  literature,  in  a  modest  priest's  habitation,  made 
comfortable  by  his  patron's  munificence.  These  two  men, 
with  a  few  others  of  minor  activity — as  Carpenter,  Bishop  of 
Bristol ;  Sir  Tibbot  Gorges,  a  country  gentleman  of  the 
neighbourhood ;  Sir  Charles  Baldwin,  a  brave  knight  of 
the  Lancastrian  faction;  Iscam,  another  priest  of  Bristol; 
Ladgate,  a  monk  of  London,  &c.  &c.— constituted,  in  fact, 
an  enlightened  little  club  in  Chatterton's  ideal  Bristol  of 
1430-60,  enlivening  that  city  by  their  amateur  theatricals  and 
other  relaxations  from  more  severe  business,  and  rendering 
it  more  distinguished  for  culture  than  any  other  town  in 
England,  excepting  Oxford  and  London.  The  fine  old 
merchant  himself  occasionally  uses  his  pen  to  some  purpose, 
as  in  his  epigram  on  the  imaginary  John  a  Dalbenie,  a  hot 
politician  of  the  town — 

"  John  makes  a  jar  'bout  Lancaster  and  York. 
Be  still,  good  manna,  and  learn  to  mind  thy  work !  " 

Generally,  however,  he  abstains  from  literature  himself, 
and  prefers  reading  or  hearing  the  productions  of  his  friends 


206  CHATTERTON I 

Iscam  and  Rowley,  especially  those  of  Rowley,  who  is  liis 
poet-laureate. 

Had  Chatterton  put  forth  this  coinage  of  his  brain  in  the 
shape  of  a  professed  historical  romance,  all  would  have  been 
well.  But  from  working  so  lovingly  in  the  matter  of  an- 
tiquity, he  contracted  also  a  preference  for  the  antique  {inform. 
As  Scott,  in  the  very  process  of  realizing  to  himself  the 
Quentin  Durwards,  the  Mause  Headriggs,  and  the  Jedediah 
Cleishbothams  of  his  inimitable  fictions,  acquired  in  his  own 
person  an  antique  way  of  thinking,  and  a  mastery  over  the 
antique  glossary,  if  not  a  positive  affection  for  it,  so  it  be- 
came natural  to  Chatterton,  revelling  as  he  did  in  conceptions 
of  the  antique,  to  draw  on,  as  it  were,  an  ancient-fashioned 
suit  of  thought,  and  make  use  of  antique  forms  of  language. 
Hence,  when,  prompted  by  his  literary  impulse,  he  sought  to 
embody  in  verse  any  of  those  traditions  or  fictions  relative 
to  the  past  time  of  England  which  his  enthusiasm  for  the 
antique  had  led  him  to  fix  upon — as,  for  example,  the  story 
of  the  Danish  invasions  of  England,  the  story  of  the  Battle 
of  Hastings,  or  the  story  of  a  tournament  in  the  reign  of 
Edward  I. — he  found  himself  obliged  by  a  kind  of  artistic 
necessity  to  impart  a  quaintness  to  his  style  by  the  use  of 
old  vocables  and  idioms.  Persisted  in  thereafter  for  the 
mere  pleasure  of  the  exercise,  the  habit  would  become 
exaggerated,  till  at  last  it  would  amount  to  an  ungovernable 
disposition  to  riot  in  the  obsolete. 

Even  so  far,  however,  there  was  nothing  blameworthy.  In 
thus  selecting  a  style  artificially  antique  for  the  conveyance 
of  his  historic  fancies,  Chatterton,  it  might  be  affirmed,  had 
but  obeyed  the  proper  instinct  of  his  genius,  and  chosen  that 
element  in  which  he  found  he  could  work  best.  Every  man 
has  his  mode,  or  set  of  intellectual  conditions  most  favour- 
able for  the  production  and  development  of  what  is  best  in 
him ;  and  in  Chatterton^s  case  this  mode,  this  set  of  condi- 
tions, consisted  in  an  affectation  of  the  antique.  For  let  any 
one  compare  the  Rowley  Poems  of  Chatterton  with  his  own 
acknowledged  productions,  and  the  conclusion  will  be  inevit- 
able, that  his  forte  was  the  antique,  and  that  here  alone  lay 


A  STORY   OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  207 

any  preternatural  power  lie  possessed.  There  are,  indeed,  in 
his  acknowledged  poems,  felicities  of  expression  and  gleams 
of  genius,  showing  that  even  as  a  modern  poet  he  would 
certainly  in  time  have  taken  a  high  rank  ;  but  to  do  justice 
to  his  astonishing  abilities,  we  must  read  his  antique  compo- 
sitions. In  the  element  of  the  antique  Chatterton  rules  like 
a  master ;  in  his  modern  effusions  he  is  but  a  clever  boy 
beginning  to  handle  with  some  effect  the  language  of  Pope 
and  Dryden.  Moreover,  there  is  a  perceptible  moral  dif- 
ference between  the  two  classes  of  his  performances.  In  his 
antique  poems  there  is  freshness,  enthusiasm,  and  a  fine 
earnest  sense  of  the  becoming ;  throughout  the  modern  ones 
we  are  offended  by  irreverence,  malevolence,  and  a  kind  of 
vicious,  boyish  pruriency.  And  conscious  as  Chatterton 
must  have  been  of  this  difference ;  aware  as  he  must  have 
been  that  it  was  when  he  wrote  in  his  artificially-antique 
style  that  his  invention  worked  most  powerfully,  that  his 
heart  beat  most  nobly,  and  the  poetic  shiver  ran  most  keenly 
through  his  veins — we  cannot  w^onder  that  he  should  have 
given  himself  up  to  this  kind  of  literary  recreation  rather 
than  to  any  other. 

Unfortunately,  however,  meaner  causes  were  all  this  while 
at  work  —  maliciousness  towards  individuals,  craving  for 
notoriety,  delight  in  misleading  people,  and,  above  all,  want 
of  money.  Moreover,  for  this  unhappy  combination  of  moral 
states  and  dispositions,  it  so  happened  that  the  Grandfather 
of  Lies  had  a  very  suitable  temptation  ready,  in  the  shape  of 
that  most  successful  literary  imposture,  the  Ossian  Poems, 
then  in  the  first  blush  of  their  contested  celebrity.  Yielding 
to  the  temptation,  Chatterton  resolved  to  turn  what  was  best 
and  most  original  in  his  genius — his  enthusiasm  for  the  an- 
tique— into  the  service  of  his  worst  propensities.  In  other 
words,  he  resolved  i^^  adopt,  with  certain  variations  and  adap- 
tations to  his  own  case,  the  trick  of  Macpherson.  That  this 
was  the  act  of  one  express  and  distinct  determination  of  his 
will — a  solemn  and  secret  compact  with  himself,  made  at  a 
very  early  period  indeed,  probably  before  the  conclusion  of 
his  fifteenth  year — there  can  be  no  manner  of  doubt.     The 


208  CHATTERTON : 

elaboration  of  his  scheme  of  imposture,  however,  was  gradual. 
The  first  exhibition  of  it,  and  probably  that  which  suggested 
much  that  followed,  was  the  Burgum  Hoax,  with  its  after- 
thought of  the  old  English  poet,  John  de  Bergham.  Of 
this  original  trick  the  Bowley  device  was  but  a  gigantic  ex- 
pansion. To  invent  a  poet  of  the  past,  on  whom  to  father  all 
his  own  compositions  in  the  antique  style,  and  to  give  this 
poet  a  probable  and  fixed  footing  in  history,  was  the  essential 
form  of  the  scheme.  That  the  poet  thus  invented  should  be 
a  native  of  Bristol,  and  that  his  date  should  be  in  the  times  of 
the  merchant  Canynge,  were  special  accidents  determined  by 
Chatterton's  position  and  peculiar  capabilities.  And  thus  the 
two  processes  of  invention,  the  legitimate  and  the  illegitimate, 
worked  into  each  other's  hands, — Chatterton's  previous  con- 
ceptions of  the  life  and  times  of  Canynge  providing  him  with  a 
proper  chronological  and  topographical  environment  for  his 
required  poet;  and  his  device  of  the  poet  giving  richness  and 
interest  to  his  romance  of  Canynge.  And,  once  begun,  there 
were  powerful  reasons  why  the  deceit  should  be  persevered 
in — the  pleasure  of  the  jest  itself;  the  secret  sense  of  superi- 
ority it  gave  him;  its  advantage  as  a  means  of  hooking  half- 
crowns  out  of  people's  pockets;  and  last,  though  not  least,  the 
impossibility  of  retracting,  without  being  knocked  down  by 
Barrett  for  damaging  his  history,  or  kicked  by  tK^Catcotts 
for  having  made  fools  of  them.  Hence,  by  little  and  little, 
the  whole  organization  of  the  imposture,  from  the  first  rumour 
of  old  manuscripts  up  to  the  use  of  ochre,  black  ^3ad,  and 
smoke,  in  preparing  specimens  of  them. 

But  Chatterton,  as  we  have  already  hinted,  was  not  a  literary 
monomaniac,  a  creature  of  one  faculty.  His  enthusiasm  for 
the  antique,  although  the  most  remarkable  part  of  him,  was 
not  the  whole  of  him.  The  Rowley  habit  of  thought  and 
expression,  though  he  liked  to  put  it  on,  was  also  a  thing  that 
he  could  at  pleasure  throw  off.  Though  an  antiquarian,  and 
a  midnight  reader  of  Speght's  Chaucer  and  other  black-letter 
volumes,  he  was  also  an  attorney's  apprentice,  accustomed  to 
small  flirtations ;  accustomed  to  debate  and  have  brawls  with 
other  attorney's   apprentices,   to   read  the  newspapers    and 


A  STORY  OF  THE  YEAR  1770.  209 

lagazines,  to  be  present  at  street  mobs  and  public  meetings, 
and  in  every  other  way  to  take  an  apprentice's  interest  in  the 
current  ongoings  of  the  day.  In  short,  besides  being  an 
antiquarian,  and  a  great  creative  genius  in  the  element  of  the 
English  antique,  Chatterton  was  also,  in  the  year  1 769-70,  a 
complete  and  very  characteristic  specimen  of  that  long-extinct 
phenomenon,  a  thinking  young  Englishman  of  the  early  part  of 
the  reign  of  George  III.  In  other  words,  reader,  besides  being, 
by  the  special  charter  of  his  genius,  a  poet  in  the  Eowley  vein, 
he  was  also,  by  the  more  general  right  of  his  life  eighty  years 
ago,  very  much  such  a  young  fellow  as  your  own  unmarried 
great-grandfather  was. 

And  what  was  that?  Why,  reader,  your  unmarried  great- 
grandfather, besides  wearing  a  wig  (which  Chatterton  did 
not),  a  coat  with  broad  lapels  and  flaps,  knee-breeches,  buckles, 
and  a  cocked  hat,  was  also,  ten  to  one,  a  wild  young  dog  of 
a  free-thinker,  fond  of  Churchill  and  Wilkes's  "  Essay  on 
Woman,"  addicted  to  horrible  slang  against  Bute  and  the 
whole  Scottish  nation,  and  raving  mad  about  a  thing  he 
called  Liberty.  He  read  and  repeated  Junius,  made  jokes 
against  parsons,  and  (only  until  he  married,  remember)  talked 
Deism  and  very  improper  moral  doctrine  with  respect  to  the 
sexes.  Now  Chatterton,  up  to  his  capacities  as  a  youth  of 
seventeen,  was  all  this.  He  repudiated  orthodoxy,  refused  to 
be  called  a  Christian,  and  held  the  whole  clerical  profession  in 
unbounded  contempt.  He  drew  up  articles  of  faith  on  a  slip  of 
paper  (still  to  be  seen  in  the  British  Museum)  which  he  carried 
in  his  pocket;  which  articles  of  faith  were  very  much  what 
Pope  believed  before  him,  and  what  Burns,  Byron,  and  others 
have  believed  since.  In  short,  he  was  recognised  in  Bristol 
circles  as  an  avowed  free-thinker ;  and  his  politics  were  to  cor- 
respond. He  sneered  at  Samuel  Johnson,  and  thought  him 
an  old  Tory  bigot,  who  had  got  a  pension  for  political  parti- 
zanship ;  he  delighted  in  the  scandal  about  Bute  and  the 
King's  mother ;  he  thought  the  King  himself  an  obstinate 
dolt ;  he  denounced  Grafton  and  the  ministry  to  small  Bristol 
audiences ;  and  he  desired  the  nation  to  rally  round  Wilkes. 
One  remark  more,  and  we  end  our  Interleaf.    As  Chatterton 

P 


210  chatterton: 

was  this  dual  pnenomenon  that  we  have  described,  as  he  was 
composed  of  two  parts — a  mania  for  the  antique,  and  that 
general  assemblage  of  more  ordinary  qualities  and  prejudices 
which  constituted  the  able  young  Englishman  of  his  era; 
so,  it  appears  to  us,  the  latter  part  of  his  character  began, 
about  his  seventeenth  year,  to  gain  upon  him.  Abandon- 
ing the  antique  vein,  wherein  he  had,  as  it  were,  a  native  gift 
ready  fashioned  from  the  first,  and  all  but  independent  of 
culture,  he  began  to  court  his  more  general  faculties  of  thought 
and  observation,  and  to  give  himself  more  willingly  up  to  that 
species  of  literature  in  which,  equally  with  other  able  young 
men,  he  could  only  hope  to  attain  ease  and  perfection  by  the 
ordinary  processes  of  assiduity  and  culture.  Had  he  lived,  we 
believe  there  was  an  amount  of  general  vigour  and  acqui- 
sition in  him  that  would  have  secured  him  eminence  even  in 
this  field,  and  have  made  him  one  of  the  conspicuous  writers 
of  the  eighteenth  century ;  but  dying  as  he  did  so  early,  the 
only  bequest  of  real  value  he  has  left  to  the  world  is  that  more 
specific  and  unaccountable  deposit  of  his  genius,  the  Rowley 
antiques. 

To  a  provincial  attorney's  apprentice,  full  of  literary  aspi- 
rations, disgusted  with  his  position  in  life,  yet  with  no  im- 
mediate prospect  of  a  better,  there  was  but  one  outlook  of  any 
reasonable  hope  or  promise — the  chance  of  being  able,  in  the 
meantime,  to  form  some  connexion  with  London  periodicals 
or  publishers.  Accordingly,  this  was  the  scheme  which  Chat- 
terton, whose  highest  printed  venture  hitherto  had  been  in 
the  columns  of  Felix  Farley  s  Bristol  Journal,  set  himself 
to  realize. 

His  first  attempt  was  upon  Dodsley,  the  publisher,  of  Pall 
Mall,  the  brother  and  successor  in  business  of  the  more  cele- 
brated Robert  Dodsley,  the  author  of  the  ''  Muse  in  Livery," 
and  other  trifles  of  some  note  in  their  day,  and  the  projector, 
along  with  Burke,  of  the  Annual  Register,  The  Dodsleys,  it 
should  be  mentioned,  had  published  a  standard  collection  of 
ancient  and  modern  English  poetry,  to  which,  it  was  under- 
stood, additions  would  be  made  in  subsequent  volumes.     This 


A  STORY  OF   THE   YEAR   1770.  211 

fact ;  the  notoriety  of  the  Annual  Register,  then  in  the  tenth 
year  of  -its  existence ;  probably,  also,  the  circumstance,  not 
likely  to  be  overlooked  by  a  young  litterateur,  that  in  that 
periodical  there  was  a  department  for  literary  contributions 
and  poetry — all  pointed  Dodsley  out  to  Chatterton  as  a  likely 
person  for  his  purpose.  Accordingly,  one  morning  towards 
the  Christmas  of  1768,  the  worthy  publisher,  entering  his 
shop  in  Pail-Mall,  finds  among  his  letters  one  from  Bristol, 
addressed  in  a  neat  small  hand,  and  worded  as  follows : — 

"Bristol,  December  21st,  1768. 
"Sir, — I  take  this  method  to  acquaint  you  that  I  can  procure  copies  of 
several  ancient  poems,  and  an  interlude,  perhaps  the  oldest  dramatic  piece 
extant,  wrote  by  one  Rowley,  a  priest  of  Bristol,  who  lived  in  the  reigns  of 
Henry  VI.  and  Edward  IV.  If  these  pieces  will  be  of  service  to  you,  at  your 
command  copies  shall  be  sent  to  you  by  your  most  obedient  servant, 

"  D.  B. 

"  Please  to  direct  to  D.  B.,  to  be  left  with  Mr.  Thomas  Chatterton,  Redcliffe 
Hill,  Bristol." 

In  reply  to  this,  Dodsley  probably  sent  an  intimation  to 
the  effect  that  he  would  be  glad  to  see  the  poems  in  question, 
particularly  the  interlude ;  for  the  following  letter,  turned  up 
long  afterwards,  along  with  the  foregoing,  among  the  loose 
papers  in  Dodsley's  counting-house,  looks  as  if  Chatterton  had 
at  least  received  a  reply  to  his  note :  — 

«'  Bristol,  Feb.  15,  1769. 
"  Sib, — Having  intelligence  that  the  tragedy  of  jEUa  was  in  being,  after  a 
long  and  laborious  search  I  was  so  happy  as  to  attain  a  sight  of  it.  I  endea- 
voured to  obtain  a  copy  of  it  to  send  you ;  but  the  present  possessor  absolutely 
denies  to  give  me  one,  unless  I  give  him  one  guinea  for  a  consideration.  As 
I  am  unable  to  procure  such  a  sum,  I  made  a  search  for  another  copy,  but 
tinsuccessfully.  Unwilling  such  a  beauteous  piece  should  be  lost,  I  have  made 
bold  to  apply  to  you.  Several  gentlemen  of  learning  who  have  seen  it  join 
with  me  in  praising  it.  1  am  far  from  having  any  mercenary  views  for  myself 
in  the  affair ;  and,  was  I  able,  would  print  it  at  my  own  risk.  It  is  a  perfect 
tragedy — the  plot  clear ;  the  language  spirited  ;  and  the  songs  (interspersed  in 
it)  flowing,  poetical,  and  elegantly  simple ;  the  similes  judiciously  applied, 
and,  though  wrote  in  the  age  of  Henry  VI.,  not  inferior  to  many  of  the  present 
age.  If  I  can  procure  a  copy,  with  or  without  the  gratification,  it  shall  be 
immediately  sent  to  you.  The  motive  that  actuates  me  to  do  this,  is  to  con- 
vince the  world  that  the  monks  (of  whom  some  have  so  despicable  an  opinion) 
were  not  such  blockheads  as  generally  thought,  and  that  good  poetry  might  be 
wrote  in  the  dark  days  of  superstition,  as  well  as  in  these  more  enlightened 
ages.  An  immediate  answer  will  oblige.  I  shall  not  receive  your  favour  as 
for  myself,  but  as  your  agent.     I  am,  sir,  your  most  obedient  servant, 

"Thomas  Chatterton. 

"  P.  S. — My  reason  for  concealing  my  name  was,  lest  my  master  (who  is  now 
out  of  town)  should  see  my  letters,  and  think  I  neglected  his  business.  Direct 
for  me  on  Redcliffe  Hill. 

p2 


212  CHATTEETON  : 

[Here  followed  an  extract  from  the  tragedy,  as  a  specimen  of  its  style.] 
"  The  whole  contains  about  one  thousand  lines.     If  it  should  not  suit  you,  I 
should  be  obliged  to  you  if  you  would  calculate  the  expenses  of  printing  it,  as 
I  will  endeavour  to  publish  it  by  subscription  on  my  own  accoimt. 
"  To  Mr.  James  Dodsley,  Bookseller,  Pall  Mail,  London." 

This  clumsy  attempt  to  extract  a  guinea  from  tlie  publisher 
(Chatterton  had  probably  just  finished  his  own  manuscript  of 
JElla,  and  did  not  like  the  notion  of  copying  out  so  long  a 
poem  on  mere  chance)  very  naturally  failed.  Mr.  Dodsley  did 
not  think  the  speculation  worth  risking  a  guinea  on ;  and 
^^  ^lla,  a  Tragycal  Enterlude,  or  Discoorseynge  Tragedte, 
wrotten  hy  Thomas  RowlUe ;  plaiedd  before  Mastre  Canynge, 
atte  hys  Howse,  nempte  the  Bodde  Lodge,''  remained  useless 
among  Chatterton' s  papers. 

Chatterton  was  not  daunted.  Among  the  notabilities  of 
the  time  with  whose  names  his  own  excursions  in  the  field  of 
literature  necessarily  made  him  acquainted,  there  was  one 
towards  whom,  for  many  reasons,  he  felt  specially  attracted — 
the  ingenious  Horace  Walpole,  then  an  elderly  gentleman  of 
fifty-two,  leading  his  life  of  luxurious  gossip  and  literary  ease, 
between  his  town  house  in  Arlington -street,  Piccadilly,  and 
his  country  seat  at  Strawberry  Hill,  Twickenham.  Known 
in  the  world  of  letters  by  his  Castle  of  Otranto,  his  tragedy  of 
The  Mysterious  Mother,  his  Catalogue  of  Royal  and  Nolle 
Authors,  and  other  various  productions,  Walpole  was  at  that 
time  busy  in  collecting  additional  materials  for  his  Anecdotes 
of  'Painting  in  England,  the  publication  of  which  he  had 
begun  in  1761.  It  is  on  this  circumstance  that  Chatterton 
fastens.  One  evening  in  March,  1769,  Mr.  Walpole,  sitting, 
we  will  suppose,  by  his  library  fire  in  Arlington-street,  has  a 
packet  brought  him  by  his  bookseller,  Mr.  Bathoe,  of  the 
Strand  (the  first  man,  by-the-bye,  that  kept  a  circulating 
library  in  London).  Opening  the  packet,  he  finds,  fiirst  of  all, 
the  following  note : — 

"  Sib, — Being  versed  a  little  in  antiquities,  I  have  met  with  several  curious 
manuscripts,  among  which  the  following  may  be  of  service  to  you  in  any  future 
edition  of  your  truly  entertaining  Anecdotes  of  Painting.  In  correcting  the 
mistakes  (if  any)  in  the  notes,  you  wiU  greatly  oblige  your  most  humble  servant, 

"Thomas  Chatterton. 
"  Bristol,  March  25  :  Corn-street." 


A  STORY   OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  213 

Appended  to  this  short  note  were  several  pages  of  antique 
writing,  entitled,  "  The  Ryse  of  Peyncteyne  in  Englande,  wroten 
by  T.  Rowlie,  1469, /or  Mastre  Canynge,''  and  commencing  as 
follows ; — *'  Peynctjnge  jnn  England  haveth  of  ould  tyme 
bin  yn  use ;  for,  saieth  the  Koman  wrjters,  the  Brytonnes  dyd 
depycte  themselves,  yn  soundrie  wyse,  of  the  fourmes  of  the 
Sonne  and  moone  wyth  the  heerbe  woade  :  albeytte  I  doubte 
theie  were  no  skylled  carvellers."     After  which  introduction, 
the  document  went  on  to  give  biographical  notices  of  certain 
distinguished  painters  that  flourished  in  England  during  Saxon 
times  and  in  the  early  Norman  reigns.    Attached  to  the  docu- 
ment, were  explanatory  notes  in  Chatterton's  own  name.    One 
of  these  notes  informed  Walpole  who  Kowley,  the  reputed 
author  of  the  MS.,  was  : — "  His  merit  as  a  biographer  and  his- 
toriographer is  great ;  as  a  poet  still  greater :    some  of  his 
pieces  would  do  honour  to  Pope  ;  and  the  person  under  whose 
patronage  they  may  appear  to  the  world  will  lay  the  English- 
man, the  antiquary,  and  the  poet,  under  eternal  obligation." 
Another    note    performed    the    like    biographical   ofiice   for 
Canynge,  that  "  Mascenas  of  his  time  f  and  a  third  conveyed 
the  information  that  one  John,  the  second  Abbot  of  Saint 
Austin's,  in  Bristol,  mentioned   in   the   text   as  "  the  fyrste 
Englyshe  paynstere  in  oyles,"  was  also  the  greatest  poet  of 
his  age  (a.d.  1186),  and  gave,  as  a  specimen  of  his  poetry, 
three  stanzas  on  Richard  I.    Finally,  Chatterton  offered  to  put 
Walpole  in  possession  of  still  other  particulars  from  the  same 
source. 

Whether  from  the  suddenness  and  naivete  of  the  attack,  or 
from  the  stupefying  effects  of  the  warm  air  of  his  library  on  a 
March  evening,  Walpole  was  completely  taken  in.  He  can 
hardly  have  glanced  over  the  whole  letter,  when,  really 
interested  by  its  contents,  he  takes  his  pen  and  writes  the  fol- 
lowing reply : — 

"Arlington-st.,  March  28,  1769. 
"  Sir, — I  cannot  but  think  myseK  singularly  obliged  by  a  gentleman  with 
whom  I  have  not  the  pleasure  of  being  acquainted,  when  I  read  your  very 
curious  and  kind  letter,  which  I  have  this  minute  received,  I  give  you  a 
thousand  thanks  for  it,  and  for  the  very  obliging  offer  you  make  of  communi- 
cating your  manuscript  to  me.  What  you  have  already  sent  me  is  valuable, 
and  full  of  information ;  but,  instead  of  correcting  you,  Sir,  you  are  far  more 


214  CHATTERTON : 

able  to  correct  me,  I  have  not  the  happiness  of  understanding  the  Saxon 
language,  and,  without  your  learned  notes,  shoiild  not  have  been  able  to 
comprehend  Rowley's  text. 

"  As  a  second  edition  of  my  Anecdotes  was  published  last  year,  I  must  not 
flatter  myself  that  a  third  will  be  wanted  soon ;  but  I  shall  be  happy  to  lay  up 
any  notices  you  will  be  so  good  as  to  extract  for  me,  and  send  me  at  your 
leisvu-e  :  for,  as  it  is  uncertain  when  I  may  use  them,  I  would  by  no  means  borrow 
or  detain  your  MSS. 

"  Give  me  leave  to  ask  you  where  Rowley's  poems  are  to  be  found,  I  should 
not  be  sorry  to  print  them,  or  at  least  a  specimen  of  them,  if  they  have  never 
been  printed. 

"  The  Abbot  John's  verses  that  you  have  given  me  are  wonderful  for  their 
harmony  and  spirit,  though  there  are  some  words  that  I  do  not  understand. 
You  do  not  point  out  exactly  the  time  when  he  lived,  which  I  wish  to  know, 
as  I  suppose  it  was  long  before  John  al  Ectry's  discovery  of  oil-painting ;  if  so, 
it  confirms  what  I  have  guessed,  and  hinted  in  my  Anecdotes,  that  oil-painting 
was  known  here  much  earlier  than  that  discovery  or  revival. 

"  I  will  not  trouble  you  with  more  questions  now.  Sir ;  but  flatter  myself, 
from  the  urbanity  and  politeness  you  have  already  shown  me,  that  you  will  give 
me  leave  to  consult  you,  I  hope,  too,  you  will  forgive  the  simplicity  of  my 
direction,  as  you  have  favovired  me  with  none  other. — I  am,  Sir,  your  much 
obliged  and  obedient  humble  servant, 

"  Horace  Walpole. 

*'  P.S. — ^Be  BO  good  as  to  direct  to  Mr.  "Walpole,  Arlington  Street." 

Chatterton  was  highly  elated.  He  had  received  a  letter  from 
the  great  Horace  Walpope,  written  as  from  an  equal  to  an  equal ! 
How  differently  men  of  that  stamp  treat  one  from  the  Catcotts, 
the  Barretts,  and  other  local  low-born  persons !  In  haste  to 
acknowledge  such  politeness,  he  sends  off  a  supplementary 
*'  Historie  of  Peyncters  yn  England,  hie  T.  RowUe  f^  containing 
also  sketches  of  two  new  poets — Ecca,  a  Saxon  bishop  of  the 
year  557,  and  Elman,  a  Saxon  bishop  of  the  same  epoch — 
with  specimens  of  their  verses,  translated  from  the  original 
Saxon  by  E-owley.  He  adds  some  more  verses  of  the  Abbot 
John's,  and  promises  a  complete  transcript  of  Rowley^s  works 
as  soon  as  he  shall  have  had  time  to  make  one.  At  the  same 
time  he  gives  Walpole  a  confidential  account  of  himself  and 
his  prospects.  This  part  of  the  letter  is  lost ;  but  Walpole 
thus  states  his  recollection  of  its  tenor  : — 

"  He  informed  me  that  he  was  the  son  of  a  poor  widow,  who  supported  him 
with  great  difiiculty ;  that  he  was  a  clerk  or  apprentice  to  an  attorney,  but  had 
a  taste  and  turn  for  more  elegant  studies ;  and  hinted  a  wish  that  I  wotdd 
assist  him  with  my  interest  in  emerging  out  of  so  dull  a  profession,  by  procuring 
him  some  place  in  which  he  could  pursue  his  natiiral  bent." 

Clearly  Chatterton  was  never  so  near  telling  the  whole 
truth  as  when,  touched  by  Walpole's  politeness,  he  thus  ad- 
dressed him  as  his  only  available  friend.     One  is  sorry  that 


A   STORY   OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  215 

he  did  not  try  the  effect  of  a  full  confession.  Had  Walpole 
received  a  letter  from  his  unknown  correspondent,  conveying 
in  addition  to  the  foregoing  particulars,  this  farther  acknow- 
ledgment, that  what  he  (Chatterton)  had  sent  to  him 
(Walpole)  was  not  a  real  extract  from  a  MS.,  but  a  forgery  ; 
that,  for  more  than  a  year,  he  had  been  palming  off  similar 
forgeries  on  various  persons  in  Bristol ;  but  that  now  he  was 
heartily  tired  of  the  cheat,  and  would  fain  be  out  of  it ;  and 
that  if  he  (Walpole),  with  such  specimens  before  him  of  his 
(Chatterton's)  powers  as  these  pretended  antiques  afforded, 
should  be  disposed  to  add  the  kindness  of  his  practical  assist- 
ance to  that  of  his  forgiveness  for  the  trick  attempted  on  him, 
he  would  thereby  earn  the  writer^s  lasting  gratitude,  and  save 
a  life  not  wholly  irretrievable — one  wonders  greatly  what,  in 
such  circumstances,  Horace  Walpole  would  have  done!  W^ould 
the  reflection  in  the  library  in  Arlington-street  have  been, 
*'  The  impudent  young  scoundrel !  I  will  write  to  his  master," 
or  *'  Poor  young  fellow !  he  throws  himself  upon  me,  and  I 
must  do  something  for  him.'' 

Unfortunately,  Chatterton  did  not  put  it  in  Walpole's  option 
whether  he  would  be  thus  generous.  He  left  the  virtuoso  to 
discover  the  fact  of  the  imposture  for  himself.  Nor  was  it 
difficult  to  do  so.  On  the  very  second  reading  of  the  communi- 
cation, to  which,  in  a  moment  of  credulity,  he  had  returned 
so  polite  a  reply,  Walpole,  sufliciently  alive,  one  would  think, 
to  the  possibility  of  a  literary  trick — his  own  Castle  of  Otranto 
had  been  published  as  a  pretended  translation  from  a  black- 
letter  book  printed  at  Naples  in  1529  ;  and  he  had  but  recently 
been  implicated  in  the  Ossian  business — must  have  begun  to 
suspect  that  all  was  not  right.  A  series  of  Anglo-Saxon 
painters  till  then  unheard  of ;  a  new  poet  of  the  twelfth  cen- 
tury writing  a  poem  on  Kichard  I.  in  perfectly  modern  metre ; 
and  a  new  poet  of  the  fifteenth,  advertised  as  having  left 
numerous  poems  and  other  writings  still  extant  in  Bristol — 
all  this  in  one  letter  was  too  much  to  swallow ;  and  little 
wonder  if,  as  he  afterwards  said,  his  reflection  was  that  "some- 
body having  met  his  '  Anecdotes  on  Painting '  had  a  mind  to 
laugh  at  him."     But  when  the  second  letter  came,  bringing 


216  CHATTERTON  : 

with  it  a  batch  of  new  painters,  and  specimens  of  two  Saxon 
poets  of  the  sixth  century  ;  and  when,  in  this  letter,  the  writer 
explained  his  circumstances,  and  that  he  was  a  poor  widow's 
son  with  a  turn  for  literature — there  could  be  no  longer  any 
doubt  about  the  matter.  His  friends.  Gray  and  Mason,  to 
whom  he  showed  the  documents,  concurred  with  him  in  think- 
ing them  forgeries,  and  "recommended  the  returning  them 
without  farther  notice."  But  Walpole,  with  an  amount  of 
good-nature  for  which  he  does  not  get  credit,  did  not  act  so 
summarily.  He  took  the  trouble,  he  says,  to  write  to  a  rela- 
tion of  his,  an  old  lady  residing  at  Bath,  desiring  her  to  make 
inquiries  about  Chatterton.  The  reply  was  a  confirmation  of 
Chatterton^s  story  about  himself,  but  "  nothing  was  returned 
about  his  character.^'  In  these  circumstances,  Walpole  dis- 
charges the  whole  matter  from  his  mind  thus  : — 

"  Being  satisfied  with  my  intelligence  about  Chatterton,  I  wrote  him  a  letter 
with  as  much  kindness  and  tenderness  as  if  I  had  been  his  guardian ;  for  though 
I  had  no  doubt  of  his  impositions,  such  a  spirit  of  poetry  breathed  in  his  coin- 
age as  interested  me  for  him ;  nor  was  it  a  grave  crime  in  a  young  bard  to  have 
forged  false  notes  of  hand  that  were  to  pass  current  only  in  the  parish  of  Par- 
nassus. I  undeceived  him  about  my  being  a  person  of  any  interest,  and  lu-ged 
to  him  that,  in  duty  and  gratitude  to  his  mother,  who  had  straitened  herself  to 
breed  him  up  to  a  profession,  he  ought  to  labour  in  it,  that  in  her  old  age  he 
might  absolve  his  filial  debt ;  and  I  told  that,  when  he  should  have  made  his 
f  ortime,  he  might  unbend  himself  with  the  studies  consonant  to  his  inclinations. 
I  told  him  also  that  I  had  communicated  his  transcripts  to  much  better  judges, 
and  that  they  were  by  no  means  satisfied  with  the  authenticity  of  his  sup- 
posed MSS." 

In  fancying  the  impatient  "  Bah,  old  gentleman !  don't  I 
know  all  that  myself?  "  with  which  the  disappointed  boy, 
reading  this  letter,  must  have  received  its  advice,  the  question 
is  apt  to  recur  to  us,  how  it  is  that,  with  such  evidence  of  the 
uselessness  of  advice  before  their  eyes,  people  are  so  stupid  as 
to  persist  in.  giving  it.  But  the  remark  of  an  eminent  living 
statistician  comes  into  our  mind.  "  Advice,"  said  he,  "  pro- 
bably saves  a  percentage."  And  certainly  this  puts  the 
matter  on  its  right  basis. 

Chatterton  sent  two  letters  in  reply  to  that  of  Walpole.  In 
the  first,  the  tone  of  which  is  somewhat  downcast,  he  pro- 
fesses himself  unable  to  dispute  with  a  person  of  such  literary 
distinction,  respecting  the  age  of  a  MS. ;  thanks  him  for  his 


A  STORY   OF  THE  YEAR   1770.  217 

advice,  and  expresses  his  resolution  to  follow  it/'  "  Though 
I  am  but  sixteen  years,"  he  says,  "  I  have  lived  long  enough 
to  see  that  poverty  attends  literature."  The  second  letter, 
which  is  dated  April  14th,  is  more  abrupt.  Here  he  expresses 
his  conviction  that  the  papers  of  E-owley  are  genuine,  and 
requests  Walpole,  unless  he  should  be  inclined  to  publish  the 
transcripts,  to  return  them,  as  he  wished  to  give  them  to 
"  Mr.  Ban-ett,  an  able  antiquary,  now  writing  the  history  of 
Bristol,"  and  had  no  other  copy. 

When  this  second  note  reached  Arlington-street,  Walpole 
was  on  the  eve  of  a  journey  to  Paris ;  and,  in  the  hurry,  the 
request  to  return  the  MSS.  was  not  attended  to.  Again  Chat- 
terton  wrote  ;  but,  as  the  virtuoso  was  absent,  he  received  no 
answer.  It  was  not  till  after  six  weeks  that  Walpole  returned 
to  London ;  and  then  so  insignificant  a  matter  was  not  likely 
to  be  remembered.  Towards  the  close  of  July,  however,  and 
when  he  had  been  again  in  town  five  or  six  weeks,  he  was 
reminded  of  his  Bristol  correspondent,  by  the  receipt  of  what 
he  thought  ''  a  singularly  impertinent  note  :'^ — 

"Sir, — I  cannot  reconcile  your  behaviour  to  me  with  the  notions  I  once 
entertained  of  you.  I  think  myself  injured,  Sir ;  and  did  you  not  know  my 
circumstances,  you  would  not  dare  to  treat  me  thus.  I  have  sent  twice  for  a 
copy  of  the  MSS. ;  no  answer  from  you.  An  explanation  or  excuse  for  yoiir 
silence  would  oblige 

"  Thomas  Chatterton. 

"July  24." 

Walpole's  conduct,  on  the  receipt  of  this  note,  we  will  let 
himself  relate : — 

"  My  heart  did  not  accuse  me  of  insolence  to  him.  I  wrote  an  answer, 
expostulating  with  him  on  his  injustice,  and  renewing  good  advice ;  but  upon 
second  thoughts,  reflecting  that  so  wrong-headed  a  young  man,  of  whom  I  knew 
nothing,  and  whom  I  had  never  seen,  might  be  absurd  enough  to  print  my 
letter,  I  flung  it  into  the  fire ;  and,  snapping  up  both  his  poems  and  letters, 
without  taking  a  copy  of  either  (for  which  I  am  now  sorry),  I  retvimed  both  to 
him,  and  thought  no  more  of  him  or  them." 

And  thus  ended  the  correspondence  between  Walpole  and 
Chatterton — Walpole  soon  forgetting  the  whole  afi'air,  and 
Chatterton  persisting  in  his  belief  that,  had  he  not  committed 
the  blunder  of  letting  his  aristocratic  correspondent  know  that 
he  was  "  a  poor  widow's  son,"  he  would  have  fared  better  at 
his  hands.     No  doubt  there  was  something  in  this.     But  of 


218  CHATTERTON : 

all  the  unreasonable  tilings  ever  done  by  a  misjudging  public, 
certainly  that  of  condemning  Walpole  to  infamy  for  his  con- 
duct in  this  affair,  and  charging  on  him  all  the  tragic  sequel 
of  Chatterton's  life,  is  one  of  the  most  unreasonable.  Why, 
the  probability  is  that  Walpole  behaved  better  than  most  people 
would  have  done  under  the  circumstances.  Let  any  one  in 
the  present  day  fancy  how  he  would  act  if  some  one  utterly 
unknown  to  him  were  to  try  to  impose  on  him,  in  a  similar  way, 
through  the  Post-office.  Would  the  mere  cleverness  of  the  cheat 
take  away  the  instinctive  frown  of  resentment,  and  change  it 
into  admiring  enthusiasm  ?  That  there  may  possibly  have 
been  in  London  at  that  time  persons  of  rare  goodness,  of  over- 
flowing tolerance  and  compassion,  that  would  have  acted  differ- 
ently from  the  virtuoso  of  Arlington-street  —  persons  who, 
saying  to  themselves,  "  Here  is  a  poor  young  man  of  abilities, 
in  a  bad  way,"  would  have  immediately  called  for  their  carpet- 
bags, and  set  off  for  Bristol  by  coach,  to  dig  out  the  culprit,  and 
lecture  him  soundly,  and  make  a  man  of  him — we  will  not 
deny.  We  fear,  however,  that  if  that  time  was  like  the  present, 
such  men  must  have  been  very  thinly  scattered,  and  very 
hard  to  find.  Looking  back  now  on  the  whole  series  of  cir- 
cumstances, we  must,  of  course,  feel  that  it  was  a  pity  the 
correspondence  did  not  lead  to  a  better  issue ;  and  Walpole 
himself  lived  to  know  this.  But  as  Burke  has  said,  '*  Men 
are  wise  with  little  reflection,  and  good  with  little  self-denial, 
in  the  business  of  all  times  except  their  own."  Let,  therefore, 
such  as  are  disposed  to  blame  Walpole  in  this  afikir  lay  the 
whole  story  to  heart  in  the  form  of  a  maxim  for  their  own 
guidance. 

While  the  correspondence  with  Walpole  had  been  going  on, 
Chatterton  had  not  been  idle.  In  the  month  of  January,  1769, 
there  appeared  in  London  the  first  number  of  a  new  periodical 
called  the  Town  and  Country  Magazine^  a  periodical  somewhat 
on  the  model  of  the  Gentleman  s  Magazine^  and  those  other 
curious  monthly  collections  of  scraps,  with  which,  eighty  years 
ago,  our  ancestors,  strangers  to  the  more  elaborate  entertain- 
ment of  modem  periodicals,  used  to  regale  their  full-fed  leisure. 
Here  was  an  opportunity  for  the  young  litterateur  of  Bristol. 


A  STORY   OF  THE  YEAR  1770.  219 

Accordingly,  In  the  February  number  (magazines  were  then 
published  retrospectively,  ix.,  at  the  close  of  the  month  whose 
name  they  bore),  there  appeared  two  contributions  from  the 
pen  of  Chatterton :  the  one  a  prose  account  of  the  costume  of 
Saxon  heralds,  signed  "  D.  B. ;"  the  other,  a  little  complimen- 
tary poem  addressed  to  "  Mr.  Alcock,  the  miniature-painter  of 
Bristol,^^  and  signed  "  Asaphides."  Under  these  signatures 
he  continued  to  contribute  to  the  magazine ;  and  effusions  of 
his,  chiefly  Ossianic  prose-poems,  purporting  to  be  from  the 
Saxon  or  ancient  British,  appeared  in  all  the  subsequent 
numbers  for  the  year  1769,  except  those  of  June,  September, 
and  October.  In  the  number  for  May  appeared  one  of  the 
finest  of  his  minor  Rowley  poems.  In  short,  at  the  publishing 
office  of  the  Town  and  Country^  in  London,  the  handwriting  of 
"D.  B.,"  of  Bristol,  must  have  been  recognised,  in  1769,  as  that 
of  one  of  the  established  coiTCspondents  of  the  magazine ; 
and  in  Bristol  it  must  have  been  a  fact  known  and  enviously 
commented  on  among  the  Carya,  the  Smiths,  the  Kators,  and 
other  young  men  of  Chatterton's  acquaintance,  that  he  could 
have  his  pieces  printed  as  often  as  he  liked  in  a  London  perio- 
dical. Chatterton  felt  the  immensity  of  the  honour  ;  and  there 
is  extant  a  somewhat  un veracious  letter  of  his  to  a  distant 
relative,  '*  a  breeches-maker  in  Salisbury,"  in  which  he  brags 
of  it.  He  tells  the  breeches-maker,  at  the  same  time,  of  his 
correspondence  with  Walpole.  "  It  ended,''  he  says,  "  as  most 
such  do.  I  differed  from  him  in  the  age  of  a  MS. ;  he  insists 
upon  his  superior  talents,  which  is  no  proof  of  that  superiority. 
We  possibly  may  engage  publicly  in  some  one  of  the 
periodical  publications,  though  I  know  not  who  will  give  the 
onset." 

The  Town  and  Country  Magazine  seems  to  have  been  the 
only  metropolitan  print  to  which  Chatterton  was  a  contributor 
during  the  year  1769.  But  in  the  beginning  of  1770,  he 
succeeded  in  another  venture,  and  became  the  correspondent 
also  of  a  London  newspaper. 

The  newspapers  of  that  day  were  by  no  means  such  as  we 
now  see.  The  largest  of  them  consisted  of  but  a  single  sheet, 
corresponding  in  size  with  our  small  evening  papers.     Their 


220  chatterton: 

contents,  too,  were  neither  so  various  nor  so  elaborately  pre- 
pared as  those  of  our  present  newspapers.  Advertisements, 
paragraphs  of  political  gossip  picked  up  outside  the  Houses  of 
Parliament,  and  scraps  of  miscellaneous  town,  country,  and 
foreign  news,  constituted  nearly  all  that  the  newspaper  then 
offered  to  its  readers.  What  we  now  call  "  leading  articles," 
were  things  hardly  known.  It  was  enough  for  even  a 
metropolitan  journal  to  have  one  editorial  hand  to  assist  the 
publisher;  and  the  notion  of  employing  a  staff  of  educated 
men  to  write  comments  on  the  proceedings  of  the  day,  was 
but  in  its  infancy.  The  place,  however,  of  leading  articles  by 
paid  attacMs  of  the  newspaper  was  in  part  supplied  by  the 
voluntary  letters  of  numerous  anonymous  correspondents 
interested  in  politics,  and  glad  to  see  their  lucubrations  in 
print.  Men  of  political  Tiote  sometimes  took  this  mode  of 
serving  the  ends  of  their  party;  but  the  majority  of  the. cor- 
respondents of  newspapers  were  literary  clients  of  official  men, 
or  private  individuals  scattered  up  and  down  the  country. 
Chief  of  these  unpaid  journalists,  king  among  the  numberless 
Brutuses,  Publicolas,  and  Catos,  that  told  the  nation  its 
grievances  through  the  columns  of  the  newspapers,  was  the 
terrible  Junius  of  the  Public  Advertiser.  The  boldest  of  his 
letters  was  perhaps  that  containing  his  ''  Address  to  the  king," 
which  was  published  on  the  19th  of  December,  1769.  Tlie 
excitement  that  followed  this  letter,  and  above  all  the  report 
that  the  publisher,  Mr.  H.  J.  Woodfall,  was  to  be  brought  to 
account  for  it  before  the  public  tribunals,  produced  a  crisis — 
some  called  it  a  panic,  some  a  jubilee — in  the  newspaper  world. 
The  other  newspapers  were,  of  course,  anxious  to  obtain  a 
share  of  the  eclat  which  the  threatened  prosecution  conferred 
on  the  Public  Advertiser,  Accordingly,  to  re-assure  its  cor- 
respondents, and  to  convince  its  subscribers  of  its  unflinching 
liberalism  in  the  midst  of  danger,  the  Middlesex  Journal, 
a  bi-weekly  newspaper  of  the  day,  not  far  behind  the  Adver- 
tiser in  credit,  hastened  to  put  forth  the  following  manifesto : — 

"  William  George  Edmunds,  of  Shoe  Lane,  in  the  parish  of  St.  Andrew's, 
Holbom,  Gent.,  maketh  oath  and  saieth,  that  he  will  not  at  any  time  declare 
the  name  of  any  person  or  persons  who  shall  send  any  papers  to  the  Middlesex 
Journal,  or  Chronicle  of  Liberty,  or  any  other  publication  in  which  he  shall  be 


A  STORY  :0F  THE   YEAK  1770.  221 

'  concerned,  without  the  express  consent  and  direction  of  the  author  of  such 
paper ;  and  that  he  will  not  make  any  discovery  by  which  any  of  his  authors 
can  be  found  out ;  and  that  he  will  give  to  the  public,  in  the  fairest  and  fullest 
naanner,  all  such  essays,  dissertations,  and  other  -wTitings,  without  any  alteration, 
so  far  as  he  can  or  ought,  consistently  with  the  duty  of  an  honest  man,  a  good 
member  of  society,  a  friend  to  his  country,  and  a  loyal  subject.— W.  G. 
Edmunds. 

"  Sworn  at  the  Mansion  House,  London,  January  1st,  1770,  before  me, 

"  "W.  Beckford,  Mayor." 

"  N.B. — ^Mr.  E.  makes  it  a  general  rule  to  destroy  all  MSS.  as  soon  as  they 
are  composed  for  the  press.  If  any  gentleman,  however,  is  desirous  of  having 
his  MSS.  returned  to  him,  Mr.  E.  begs  that  the  words  *  to  be  rettmied,'  may  be 
in  large  letters  at  the  end  of  the  originals.  In  that  case  they  shall  be  preserved 
and  delivered  up  to  any  person  who  shall  bring  an  order  for  that  purpose  in  the 
same  handwriting  as  the  original." 

This  manifesto  of  Mr.  Edmunds,  copied  by  us  from  the 
Middlesex  Journal  for  February  6th,  1770,  and  which  was 
repeated  in  succeeding  numbers,  probably  caught  Chatterton's 
eye  in  Bristol,  and  determined  his  already  cherished  intention 
of  trying  his  hand  at  a  newspaper  article.  Accordingly,  he 
plunges  at  once  in  medias  res.  There  had  just  been  a  change 
of  ministry.  The  Duke  of  Grafton,  the  favourite  victim  of 
Junius,  had  resigned,  and  given  place,  for  some  secret  Court 
reason,  to  the  goggle-eyed  Lord  North.  Chatterton,  hear- 
ing much  talk  about  this  affair,  thinks  it  a  good  topic  for 
his  purpose,  and,  stealing  a  forenoon  from  his  office-work, 
pens,  in  a  style  mimicked  after  that  of  Junius,  a  "  letter  to 

the  Duke  of  G n,"  in  which  he  informs  that  illustrious 

personage  that  his  resignation  has  ''  caused  more  speculation 
than  any  harlequinade  he  has  already  acted ;"  and  tells  him 
that  as  he  had  been  all  along  the  tool  of  Bute,  to  whom 
he  was  at  first  recommended  by  his  *'  happy  vacuity  of  inven- 
tion," so  now  it  is  Bute's  influence  that  has  dismissed  him. 
This  missive  he  dates  "  Bristol,  February  16,"  and  signs 
"  Decimus."  Mr.  Edmunds,  receiving  it  in  his  sanctum  in 
Shoe  Lane,  glances  over  it,  thinks  it  tolerably  smart,  and 
prints  it.  Whether  the  Duke  of  Grafton  ever  saw  it,  poor 
fellow,  we  do  not  know.  If  he  did,  "  One  wasp  more  "  would 
be  his  very  natural  reflection ;  and  he  would  go  on  sipping 
his  chocolate. 

Chatterton^ s  next  contribution  to  the  Middlesex  Journal,  or 
at  least  the  next  that  Mr.  Edmunds  thought  proper  to  print, 
was  one  with  the  same  signature,  dated  "  Bristol,  April  10, 


222  CHATTERTON : 

1770,"  and  addressed  to  that  much-abused  lady,  the  Princess 
Dowager  of  Wales,  the  mother,  and,  as  people  said,  manager 
of  the  king.  Here  is  a  specimen — Junius,  it  will  be  ob- 
served, to  the  very  cadence : — 

"  By  you  men  of  no  principles  were  thrust  into  ofl&ces  tbey  did  not  know  how 
to  discharge,  and  honoured  with  trusts  they  accepted  only  to  violate ;  being 
made  more  conspicuously  mean  by  commiuiicating  error  and  often  vice  to  the 
character  of  the  person  who  promoted  them,  None  but  a  sovereign  power  can 
make  little  villains  dangerous ;  the  nobly  vicious,  the  daringly  ambitious,  only 
rise  from  themselves.  Without  the  influence  of  ministerial  authority,  Mans- 
field had  been  a  pettifogging  attorney,  and  Warbvui;on  a  bustling  country 
ciirate.  The  first  had  not  lived  to  bury  the  substance  of  our  laws  in  the 
shadows  of  his  explanations ;  nor  would  the  latter  have  confounded  religion 
with  deism,  and  proved  of  no  use  to  either.  .  .  .  The  state  of  affairs  very 
much  resembles  the  eve  of  the  troubles  of  Charles  I.  Unhappy  monarch,  thou 
hast  a  claim,  a  dear-bought  claim,  to  our  pity ;  nothing  but  thy  death  could 
purchase  it.  Hadst  thou  died  quietly  and  in  peace,  thou  hadst  died  infamous  ; 
thy  misfortunes  were  the  only  happy  means  of  saving  thee  from  the  book 
of  shame.     What  a  parallel  cotdd  the  freedom  of  an  English  pen  strike  out !  " 

This  letter  was  written  on  a  Tuesday.  On  the  Saturday, 
or,  more  probably,  on  the  Monday  following,  a  tremendous 
denouement  took  place. 

Chatterton,  among  his  other  eccentricities,  had  often  been 
heard  to  talk  familiarly  of  suicide.  One  evening,  for  example, 
pulling  out  a  pistol  in  the  presence  of  some  of  his  companions, 
he  had  placed  it  to  his  forehead,  saying,  "  Now,  if  one  had 
but  courage  to  draw  the  trigger !"  Nor  was  this  mere  juvenile 
affectation.  Hateful  from  the  first,  Chatterton's  position  in 
Bristol  had  by  this  time  become  unendurable  to  him.  All  his 
literary  honours,  as  contributor  to  a  London  magazine  and 
correspondent  of  a  London  newspaper,  were  as  nothing  when 
put  in  the  balance  against  his  present  servitude.  If  there 
were  seasons  when,  sanguine  in  his  hopes  of  a  better  future, 
he  was  able  to  keep  his  disgust  within  bounds,  there  were 
others  where  it  rose  to  a  perfect  frenzy. 

Such  a  season  seems  to  have  been  the  week  in  which  the 
foregoing  letter  was  written  for  the  Middlesex  Journal.  From 
some  circumstance  or  other  Chatterton  was  that  week  reduced 
to  the  necessity  of  asking  Burgum  for  a  loan  of  money ;  which 
Burgum,  at  the  last  moment,  refused.  Chatterton  has  thus 
perpetuated  the  fact : — 

"  When  wildly  squandering  everything  I  got, 
On  books  and  learning,  and  the  Lord  knows  what ; 


A  STORY   OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  223 

Could  Burgum  then — my  critic,  patron,  friend- 
Without  security,  attempt  to  lend  ? 

No,  that  would  be  imprudent  in  the  man  : 

Accuse  him  of  imprudence  if  you  can  !" 

This  disappointment  throws  him  into  a  state  of  humour 
bordering  on  the  suicidal ;  and,  being  left  alone  in  his  master's 
office  on  the  Saturday  forenoon  following,  he  displays  it  by 
penning  a  kind  of  satirical  will  or  suicide's  farewell  to  the 
world.  This  extraordinary  document,  which  is  still  extant,  is 
headed  thus :  "  All  this  wrote  between  11  and  2  o'clock, 
Saturday,  in  the  utmost  distress  of  mind,  April  14,  1770 ;" 
and,  after  some  fifty  lines  of  verse  addressed  to  Burgum,  the 
Rev.  Mr.  Catcott,  and  Barrett,  it  proceeds  as  follows : — 

"  This  is  the  last  will  and  testament  of  me,  Thomas  Chatterton,  of  the  city 
of  Bristol ;  being  sound  in  body,  or  it  is  the  fault  of  my  last  surgeon  :  the 
soundness  of  my  mind  the  coroner  and  jury  are  to  be  judges  of — desiring  them 
to  take  notice  that  the  most  perfect  masters  of  human  nature  in  Bristol  dis- 
tinguish me  by  the  title  of  *  the  mad  genius  ;'  therefore,  if  I  do  a  mad  action,  it 
is  conformable  to  every  action  of  my  life,  which  aU  savoured  of  insanity. 

'^  Item. — If,  after  my  death,  which  will  happen  to-morrow  night  before  eight 
o'clock,  being  the  Feast  of  the  Resurrection,  the  coroner  and  jury  bring  it  in 
lunacy,  I  will  and  direct  that  Paul  Farr,  Esq.,  and  Mr.  John  Flower,  at  their 
joint  expense,  cause  my  body  to  be  interred  in  the  tomb  of  my  fathers,  and 
raise  the  monument  over  my  body  to  the  height  of  four  feet  five  inches,  placing 
the  present  flat  stone  on  the  top,  and  adding  six  tablets. 

["  Here  follow  directions  for  certain  engravings  to  be  placed  on  the  six  tablets 
viz.,  on  two  of  them,  fronting  each  other,  certain  heraldic  achievements ;  on 
another,  an  inscription,  in  old  English  characters,  to  his  ancestor,  Guatevine 
Chatterton,  A.D.  1210 ;  on  another,  an  inscription,  in  the  same  character,  to 
another  ancestor,  Alanus  Chatterton,  A.D.  1415 ;  on  another,  an  inscription,  in 
Roman  letters,  to  the  memoiy  of  his  father ;  and  on  the  remaining  one,  this 
epitaph  to  himself  : — 

"to  the  memory  of 

"THOMAS  CHATTERTOK 

"  Reader,  judge  not.  If  thou  art  a  Christian,  believe  that  he  shall  be  judged 
by  a  supreme  power  :  to  that  power  alone  is  he  now  answerable."] 

"  And  I  will  and  direct  that  if  the  coroner's  inquest  bring  it  in  felo-de-se,  the 
said  monument  shall  be,  notwithstanding,  erected.  And  if  the  said  Paul  Farr 
and  John  Flower  have  souls  so  Bristolish  as  to  refuse  this  my  request,  they 
will  transmit  a  copy  of  my  will  to  the  Society  for  supporting  the  Bill  of  Rights, 
whom  I  hereby  empower  to  build  the  said  monument  according  to  the  afore- 
said directions.  And  if  they,  the  said  Paul  Farr  and  John  Flower,  should 
build  the  said  monument,  I  wiU  and  direct  that  the  second  edition  of  my  Keto 
Gardens  shall  be  dedicated  to  them  in  the  following  dedication  : — '  To  Paul  Parr 
and  John  Flower,  Esqrs,,  this  book  is  most  humbly  dedicated  by  the  author's 
ghost.' 

"  Item. — I  give  all  my  vigour  and  fire  of  youth  to  Mr.  George  Catcott,  being 
sensible  he  is  most  in  want  of  it. 

''Item. — From  the  same  charitable  motive,  I  give  and  bequeath  unto  the 
Rev.  Mr.  Camplin,  sen.,  aU  my  humility.  To  Mr.  Burgum  all  my  prosody  and 
grammar,  likewise  one  moiety  of  my  modesty ;  the  other  moiety  to  any  young 


224  CHATTERTON  : 

lady  who  can  prove,  without  blushing,  that  she  wants  that  valuable  commodity. 
To  Bristol  all  my  spirit  and  disinterestedness,  parcels  of  goods  unknown  on  her 
quay  since  the  days  of  Canning  and  Rowley.  ('Tis  true,  a  charitable  gentleman, 
one  Mr.  Colston,  smuggled  a  considerable  quantity  of  it ;  but,  it  being  proved 
that  he  was  a  Papist,  the  worshipfvil  society  of  aldermen  endeavoured  to  throttle 
him  with  the  oath  of  allegiance).  I  leave  also  my  religion  to  Dr.  Cutts  Barton, 
Dean  of  Bristol,  hereby  empowei'ing  the  sub-sacrist  to  strike  him  on  the  head 
when  he  goes  to  sleep  in  church.  My  powers  of  utterance  I  give  to  the  Rev. 
Mr.  Broughton,  hoping  he  will  employ  them  to  a  better  purpose  than  reading 
lectures  on  the  immortality  of  the  soul.  I  leave  the  Rev.  Mr.  Catcott  some 
little  of  my  free-thinking,  that  he  may  put  on  spectacles  of  reason,  and  see  how 
vilely  he  is  duped  in  believing  the  Scriptures  literally.  (I  wish  he  and  his 
brother  George  would  know  how  far  I  am  their  real  enemy ;  but  I  have  an  un- 
lucky way  of  raillery ;  and  when  the  strong  fit  of  satire  is  upon  me,  I  spare 
neither  friend  nor  foe.  This  is  my  excuse  for  what  I  have  said  of  them  else- 
where). I  leave  Mr.  Clayfield  the  sincerest  thanks  my  gratitude  can  give; 
and  I  will  and  direct  that  whatever  any  person  may  think  the  pleasvire  of 
reading  my  works  worth,  they  immediately  pay  their  own  valuation  to  him, 
since  it  is  then  become  a  lawful  debt  to  me,  and  to  him  as  my  executor  in  this 
case. 

"  I  leave  my  moderation  to  the  politicians  on  both  sides  of  the  question.  I  leave 
my  generosity  to  our  present  right  worshipful  mayor,  Thomas  Harris,  Esq. 
I  give  my  abstinence  to  the  company  at  the  Sheriff's  annual  feast  in  general, 
more  partictdarly  the  aldermen. 

"  Item. — I  give  and  bequeath  to  Mr.  Matthew  Mease  a  mourning  ring  with 
this  motto,  *  Alas,  poor  Chatterton  ! '  provided  he  pays  for  it  himself.  Item. — 
I  leave  the  young  ladies  all  the  letters  they  have  had  from  me,  assuring  them 
that  they  need  be  under  no  apprehensions  from  the  appearance  of  my  ghost,  for 
I  die  for  none  of  them.  Item. — I  leave  all  my  debts,  the  whole  not  five  pounds, 
to  the  payment  of  the  charitable  and  generous  Chamber  of  Bristol,  on  penalty, 
if  refused,  to  hinder  every  member  from  a  good  dinner  by  appearing  in  the 
form  of  a  bailiff.  If,  in  defiance  of  this  terrible  spectre,  they  obstinately  persist 
in  refusing  to  discharge  my  debts,  let  my  two  creditors  apply  to  the  supporters 
of  the  Bill  of  Rights.  Item. — I  leave  my  mother  and  sister  to  the  protection  of 
my  friends,  if  I  have  any. 

"  Executed  in  the  presence  of  Omniscience,  this  14th  of  April,  1770. 

"  Thomas  Chatteeton." 

Whether  this  dreadful  document  got  immediately  abroad 
among  Chatterton's  friends,  does  not  appear ;  another  docu- 
ment, however,  written  at  the  same  time  and  in  the  same  mad 
mood,  was  sufficiently  alarming  to  produce  a  catastrophe.  The 
Mr.  Clayfield  mentioned  with  such  peculiar  respect  in  the 
preceding  paper,  a  distiller,  of  means  and  respectability,  and 
a  friend  of  Mr.  Lambert's,  seems  to  have  been  a  person  of 
more  than  usual  consideration  in  the  eyes  of  Mr.  Lambert's 
apprentice.  To  him,  accordingly,  rather  than  to  any  other 
person  in  Bristol,  he  chose  to  indite  a  letter  conveying  his 
rash  intention  of  suicide.  This  letter — not  actually  sent  to 
Mr.  Clayfield  by  Chatterton,  but  inadvertently  left  about, 
it  would  appear,  with  that  gentleman's  address  upon  it — was 
prematurely  delivered  to  him.  Startled  by  its  contents,  he  lost 


A   STOEY   OF   THE   YEAR   1770.  225 

ilo  time  in  communicating  them  to  Mr.  Lambert.  There  was 
an  immediate  consultation  among  Chatterton's  friends,  and 
Mr.  Barrett  undertook  to  see  the  insane  lad,  and  reason  with 
him  on  the  folly  and  criminality  of  his  conduct.  Accordingly, 
a  long  conversation  took  place  between  them,  in  which,  to 
use  his  own  words,  he  took  Chatterton  to  task  for  the  "  bad 
company  and  principles  he  had  adopted,"  and  lectured  him 
seriously  "on  the  horrible  crime  of  self-murder,  however 
glossed  over  by  present  libertines."  Chatterton  was  affected, 
and  shed  tears.  The  next  day,  however,  he  sent  Mr.  Barrett 
the  following  letter,  the  original  of  which  may  be  seen  in  the 
British  Museum : — 

"  Sir, — Upon  recollection  I  don't  know  how  Mr.  Clayfield  could  come  by  his 
letter,  as  I  intended  to  give  him  a  letter,  but  did  not.  In  regard  to  my  motives 
for  the  supposed  rashness,  I  shall  observe  that  I  keep  no  worse  company  than 
myself :  I  never  drink  to  excess,  and  have,  without  vanity,  too  much  sense  to  be 
attached  to  the  mercenary  retailers  of  iniquity.  No,  it  is  my  pride,  my 
damn'd  native  unconquerable  pride,  that  plunges  me  into  distraction.  You 
must  know  that  nineteen-twentieths  of  my  composition  is  pride.  I  must  either 
live  a  slave,  a  servant,  to  have  no  wiU  of  my  own,  which  I  may  freely  de- 
clare as  such,  or  die.  Perplexing  alternative  !  but  it  distracts  me  to  think  of 
it !  I  will  endeavour  to  learn  humility,  but  it  cannot  be  here.  What  it  may 
cost  me  in  the  trial,  Heaven  knows. 

"  I  am  your  much  obliged  unhappy  humble  servant, 

"T.  C. 
.    "  Thursday  Evening." 

Before  this  letter  had  been  written  by  Chatterton,  one  thing 
had  been  fully  determined  with  regard  to  him.  Mr.  Lambert 
was  no  longer  to  keep  him  in  his  service.  Even  had  the 
lawyer  himself  been  willing  to  make  the  attempt,  his  mother, 
who  kept  house  for  him — an  old  lady  betw^een  whom  and 
Chatterton  there  had  never,  we  have  reason  to  think,  been 
any  kind  of  cordiality — would  certainly  not  have  listened  to 
such  a  thing.  What !  sleep  under  the  same  roof  with  a  profligate 
young  scoundrel  that  had  threatened  to  make  away  with 
himself?  Find  the  garret  in  a  welter  some  morning  with  the 
young  rascal's  blood,  and  have  a  coroner's  inquest  in  the 
house  ?  Better  at  once  give  him  up  his  indentures,  and  be  rid 
of  him  !  And  with  this  advice  of  the  old  lady,  even  the 
calmer  deliberations  of  Chatterton's  own  friends,  Barrett, 
Catcott,  and  the  rest,  could  not  but  agree.  So  on  or  about 
Monday,  the  16th  of  April,  1770,  it  was  intimated  to  Chat- 

Q 


226  CHATTERTON  : 

terton  that  he  must  no   longer  consider   himself  as  in  the 
employment  of  Mr.  Lambert. 

Tuesday,  the  17th,  it  will  be  remembered,  was  the  .day  of 
Wilkes's  release  from  prison ;  and  on  Thursday,  the  19th — the 
very  day,  as  we  guess,  on  which  the  foregoing  letter  to 
Mr.  Barrett  was  written — there  took  place  in  Bristol  that 
dinner,  in  honour  of  the  patriot,  at  which,  according  to  the 
announcement  in  the  Public  Advertiser j  the  more  prominent 
Liberals  of  the  place  were  to  assemble  at  "  the  Crown,  in  the 
passage  from  Broad-street  to  Tower-lane,"  to  eat  their  forty- 
five  pounds  of  meat,  drink  their  forty-five  tankards  of  ale  and 
their  forty-five  bowls  of  punch,  and  smoke  their  forty-five 
pipes  of  tobacco.  Were  we  wrong,  then,  in  fancying  that 
while  these  guests  were  making  merry  in  the  Crown,  Chat- 
terton  may  have  been  moodly  perambulating  the  adjacent 
streets?  And  shall  we  be  wrong  if  we  fancy,  farther,  that 
Banctt  was  one  of  the  guests ;  that  the  story  of  Mr.  Lambert's 
apprentice  and  his  intended  suicide  may  have  been  talked  over 
by  the  happy  gentlemen,  when,  having  finished  their  toasts, 
they  sat  down  at  leisure  to  their  pipes  and  their  remaining 
punch ;  and  that  the  precise  moment  when  Mr.  Barrett  may 
have  received  the  above  epistle  from  his  misguided  young 
acquaintance,  may  have  been,  when,  after  seeing  Catcott  part 
of  the  way  home,  he  had  just  let  himself  into  his  surgery, 
about  midnight,  with  his  unsteady  latch-key,  and  begun  to 
whistle,  to  assure  the  wakeful  Mrs.  B.  that  he  was  perfectly 
sober  ?  Shade  of  the  surgeon,  or  his  descendants,  if  he  has 
any,  forgive  us,  if  we  wrong  him ! 


CHAPTER   III. 

IMPROPER   FEMALE   FRIENDS,   AND   A   JOURNEY   TO   LONDON. 

Cast  out  of  all  chance  of  a  livelihood  in  his  native  town, 
there  was  but  one  course  open  to  Chatterton :  to  bid  farewell 
to  Bristol  and  attorneyship,  and  try  what  he  could  do  in  the 
great  literary  mart  of  London.  Sanguine  as  were  his  hopes 
of  success,  it  can  have  cost  him  but  little  thought  to  make  up 


A  STORY    OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  227 

his  mind  to  this  course ;  if,  indeed,  he  did  not  secretly  con- 
gratulate himself  that  his  recent  escapade  had  ended  so  agree- 
ably. Probably  there  was  but  one  thing  that  stood  in  the 
way  of  an  immediate  declaration  by  himself,  after  the  fracas 
was  over,  that  this  was  the  resolution  he  had  come  to — the 
want,  namely,  of  a  little  money  to  serve  as  outfit.  No  sooner, 
therefore,  was  this  obstacle  removed  by  the  charitable  deter- 
mination of  his  friends,  Mr.  Bari'ett,  Mr.  Clayfield,  the  Cat- 
eotts,  &c.,  to  make  a  little  subscription  for  him,  so  as  to 
present  him  with  the  parting  gift  of  a  few  pounds,  than  the 
tide  of  feeling  was  turned,  and  from  a  state  of  despondency 
Chatterton  gave  way  to  raptures  of  unbounded  joy.  London ! 
London  !  A  few  days  and  he  should  have  left  the  dingy  quays 
of  abominable  Bristol,  and  should  be  treading,  in  the  very 
footsteps  of  Goldsmith,  Garrick,  and  Johnson,  the  liberal 
London  streets ! 

Chatterton  remained  exactly  a  week  in  Bristol  after  his 
dismissal  from  Mr.  Lambert's ;  ^.  e.  from  the  16th  to  the  24th 
of  April.  A  busy  week  we  may  suppose  that  must  have  been 
to  Mrs.  Chatterton  and  her  daughter :  shirts  to  be  made  and 
buttoned,  stockings  to  be  looked  after,  and  all  Thomas's  ward- 
robe to  be  got  decently  in  order  against  his  departure.  Poor 
fellow !  notwithstanding  all  that  idle  people  say  of  him,  they 
know  better ;  he  has  a  proud  spirit,  but  a  good  heart,  and  he 
will  make  his  way  yet  with  the  best  of  them !  And  so,  in 
their  humble  apartments,  the  widow  and  her  daughter  ply 
their  needles,  talking  of  Thomas  and  his  prospects,  as  only  a 
mother  and  sister  can. 

The  subject  of  their  conversation,  meanwhile,  is  generally 
out,  going  from  street  to  street,  and  taking  leaye  of  his 
friends.  Barrett,  the  two  Catcotts,  Mr.  Alcock,  Mr.  Clayfield, 
Burgum,  Matthew  Mease ;  also  his  younger  friends,  the 
Carys,  Smiths,  and  Kators — he  makes  the  round  of  them  all, 
receiving  their  good  wishes,  and  making  arrangements  to 
correspond  with  them.  To  less  intimate  acquaintances,  too, 
met  accidentally  in  the  streets,  he  has  to  bid  a  friendly  good- 
bye. Moreover,  there  are  his  numerous  female  friends— the 
Miss  Webbs,  the  Miss  Thatchers,  the  Miss  Hills,  &c.,  not  to 

Q2 


228  CHATTERTON  : 

omit  tlie  "  female  Machiavel/^  Miss  Rumsey ;  wlio  have  all 
heard,  with  more  or  less  concern,  that  they  are  about  to  lose 
their  poet,  and  are,  of  course,  anxious  to  see  him  before  he 
goes.  Of  some  acquaintances  of  this  class,  probably  the  more 
humble  of  them,  he  appears  to  have  taken  a  kind  of  collective 
farewell.  Long  afterwards,  at  least,  a  Mrs.  Stephens,  the 
wife  of  a  cabinet-maker  in  Bristol,  used  to  tell  that  she  re- 
membered, when  a  girl,  Chatterton's  "  taking  leave  of  her  and 
some  others,  on  the  steps  of  RedclifFe  Church,  very  cheer- 
fully," before  his  going  to  London.  "At  parting,  he  said  he 
would  give  them  some  gingerbread ;  and  went  over  the  way 
to  Mr.  Freeling's,  to  buy  some.''  In  connexion  with  which 
little  anecdote,  reader,  we  have  a  mysterious  little  scrap  of 
document  to  produce. 

A.  great  deal  of  nonsense,  as  it  seems  to  us,  has  been 
written  on  the  question  of  Chatterton's  moral  character.  Was 
he  a  libertine,  as  some  have  represented — a  precocious  young 
blackguard,  indebted  for  his  bad  end  to  his  own  habits  of 
profligacy;  or  was  he  at  least  no  worse  in  this  respect 
than  his  neighbours  ?  Naturally  resenting  the  harsh  way  in 
which  Chalmers  and  other  earlier  biographers  of  Chatterton 
handled  his  memory,  the  writers  of  more  recent  notices  have 
certainly  made  out,  in  favour  of  "  the  marvellous  boy,"  a  cer- 
tificate of  good  behaviour  to  which  he  was  not  entitled,  and 
for  which  he  would  not  have  thanked  them.  The  evidence 
on  which  they  have  laid  most  stress  in  connexion  with  this 
point  is  that  of  Chatterton's  sister,  as  given  by  her  in  her 
letter  to  the  E-ev.  Sir  Herbert  Croft,  eight  years  after  Chat- 
terton's death,  and  published  by  that  gentleman  in  his 
singular  book,  "Love  and  Madness."  The  following  is  a 
passage  from  that  touching  and  simple  epistle,  spelt  as  in  the 
original : — 

"  He  wrote  one  letter  to  Sir  Horace  Warlpool ;  and  except  his  correspon- 
dence with  Miss  Rumsey,  the  girl  I  have  mentioned,  I  know  of  no  other.  He' 
would  frequently  walk  the  Colledge  green  with  the  young  girls  that  statedly 
paraded  there  to  show  their  finery.  But  I  really  believe  he  was  no  debauchee 
(tho'  some  have  reported  it),  the  dear  unhappy  boy  had  faults  enough  I  saw 
with  concern,  he  was  proud  and  exceedingly  impetious,  but  that  of  venality  " 
[poor  Mrs.  N.  thinks  this  a  fine  word  for  licentiousness]  "he  could  not  be  justly 
accused  with.    Mrs.  Lambert  informed  me  not  2  months  before  he  left  Bristol, 


A   STORY   OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  229 

he  had  never  been  once  found  out  of  the  office  in  the  stated  hours,  as  they  fre- 
quently sent  the  footman  and  other  servants  to  see.  Nor  but  once  stayed  out 
till  11  o'clock;  then  he  had  leave,  as  we  entertained  some  friends  at  our  house 
at  Christmas." 

This  very  distinct  piece  of  evidence  in  favour  of  Chatter- 
ton's  punctual  conduct  as  an  apprentice  (he  had  probably  the 
fear  of  that  she-dragon,  Mrs.  Lambert,  before  his  eves),  has 
been  strained  by  the  writers  alluded  to  into  a  testimony  to  his 
moral  reproachiessness.  A  fruitless  attempt,  we  fear !  The 
worth  of  a  sister's  assurance  that  her  deceased  brother  could 
not  be  justly  accused  of  "  venality,"  it  is  not  difficult  to  esti- 
mate ;  besides  that  it  is  accompanied  with  the  information 
that  the  common  report  was  to  the  contrary,  and  with  the 
allusion  to  the  habit  of  "  walking  with  the  girls  on  the  Col- 
lege-green," whatever  that  may  mean.  Then,  again^  we  have 
the  fact  that  Mr.  Barrett,  in  his  remonstrance  with  him 
respecting  his  alarming  letter  to  Mr.  Clayfield,  attributed  his 
bad  state  of  mind  to  his  keeping  immoral  company.  His  own 
allusions,  too,  scattered  through  his  writings,  are  quite  deci- 
sive, even  were  we  not  to  take  into  account  the  almost 
constant  tone  which  runs  through  all  that  part  of  his  writings 
that  is  not  antique ;  evidently  the  productions,  as  these 
modern  pieces  are,  of  a  clever  boy  too  conscious  of  forbidden 
things,  and  eager  (as  boys  are  till  some  real  experience  of  the 
heart  has  made  them  earnest  and  silent)  to  assert  his  question- 
able manhood  among  his  compeers,  by  constant  and  irreverent 
talk  about  the  sexes.  And,  after  all,  have  we  not  the  native 
probabilities  of  the  case  itself?  Are  young  men  in  general, 
and  attorneys'  apprentices  in  particular,  so  immaculately 
moral,  that  it  becomes  necessary  to  argue  out  something  like 
a  perfectly  virtuous  character  for  Chatterton,  before  venturing 
to  introduce  him  to  the  admirers  of  genius  and  literature? 
Should  we  fail  in  doing  this  for  him,  will  Byron,  Burns,  and 
the  rest  of  them,  refuse  to  shake  hands  with  him?  It  is 
a  pity,  certainly,  that  we  should  have  to  say  so.  Young  men  of 
genius  may  take  warning.  That  convenient  theory  of  "  wild 
oats,"  which  has  been  provided  and  put  in  circulation  for  their 
use  by  the  thoughtless  and  the  interested,  better  for  themselves 
in  the  end  if  they  decidedly  reject  it !    Were  Byron  and  Burns, 


230  chatteeton: 

or  were  Chatterton  himself,  to  speak  now,  they  would  say  so 
too.  Greatest  is  he  who,  needing  no  benefit  from  the  theory 
himself,  yet  can  weigh  it,  and  know  how  to  be  charitable ! 

And  now  for  our  document.  If  the  reader  were  to  go  to 
the  reading-room  of  the  British  Museum,  and  ask  for  the 
Chatterton  MSS.  (a  considerable  portion  of  all  the  surviving 
MSS.  of  Chatterton  is  in  the  Museum,  the  remainder  being 
in  Bristol,  and  elsewhere)  he  would  have  three  volumes 
brought  to  him  containing  papers  and  parchments  of  various 
shapes  and  sizes,  some  stained,  smoked,  and  written  like 
antiques ;  others  undisguisedly  modern.  If,  after  overcoming 
the  strange  feeling  that  here  in  his  hands  are  the  very  sheets 
over  which  eighty  years  ago  Chatterton  bent,  tracing  with 
nimble  fingers  the  black  characters  over  the  white  pages,  the 
reader  should  examine  the  papers  successively  and  indivi- 
dually, he  would  come  upon  one  that  would  puzzle  him 
much.  It  is  a  dingy  piece  of  letter-paper,  once  folded  as 
a  letter,  and  containing  a  very  ugly  scrawl  in  an  uneducated 
female  hand. 

Here  it  is,  printed  for  the  first  time : — 

"  Sir,  I  send  my  Love  to  you  and  Tell  you  This  if  you  prove  Constant  I  not 
miss  but  if  you  frown  and  Torn  away  I  can  make  oart  of  batterd  Hay  pray 
excep  of  me  Love  Hartley  an  send  me  word  Cartingley.  Tell  me  How  maney 
Dimes  of  Green  Gingerbread  Can  Sho  the  baker  of  Honiste. 

"  My  House  is  not  belt  with  Stavis.  I  not  be  Coarted  by  Boys  nor  navis, 
I  Halve  a  man  and  a  man  Shall  Halve  me,  if  I  whaint  a  fool  I  Send  for 
Thee. 

"  If  you  are  going  to  the  D I  wish  you  a  good  Gonery." 

What  in  all  the  world  have  we  here  ?  Exercising  our  utmost 
ingenuity  for  the  pm-pose  of  determining,  if  possible,  what 
petty,  and,  perhaps,  not  very  nameable,  Bristol  occurrence  of 
the  year  1770,  this  lamentable  piece  of  ill- written  doggrel 
(the  reader  will  observe  that  part  of  the  letter  is  in  a  kind  of 
cripple  rhyme)  grew  out  of,  and  has  come  down  to  us  amid 
the  Museum  MSS.,  to  perpetuate  and  represent;  we  can 
honestly  arrive  but  at  one  conclusion — that  it  is  the  spiteful 
epistle  of  some  improper  female  friend,  avenging  herself  with 
all  the  energy  of  feminine  malice,  for  the  spretce  injuria  formce, 
or   some   other  fancied   wrong.     Did  we  dare  to  copy  the 


A   STORY  OF    THE   YEAR   1770.  231 

version  of  the  letter,  or  rather  jocular  answer  to  it,  written  in 
Chatterton's  own  hand  on  the  back  of  the  sheet,  in  the  shape 
of  a  few  extremely  impolite  and  not  at  all  quoteable  Hudi- 
brastic  lines,  we  think  our  hypothesis  would  appear  inevitable. 
In  short,  we  explain  the  matter  thus: — Among  the  various 
acquaintances  of  Chatterton  interested  in  the  news  of  his 
approaching  departure,  is  some  improper  female  friend, 
labouring  under  the  provocation  of  the  sjpretcR  injuria  formce^ 
or  of  some  injury  or  fancied  injury,  not  now  ascertainable. 
This  Bristol  Juno  sees,  with  pangs  incredible,  her  faithless 
Jove  dispensing  the  gingerbread  he  has  bought  at  "Mr. 
Freeling's,  over  the  way,'^  among  the  numerous  nymphs  wait- 
ing for  it  on  the  steps  of  Redcliffe  Church  ;  she  goes  home,  and 
discharges  all  her  malevolence  in  one  fell  epistle,  into  which, 
with  vast  literary  effort,  she  contrives  to  introduce  an  allusion 
to  the  gingerbread ;  this  epistle,  intended  to  pierce  her  Jove's 
heart  like  a  poisoned  arrow,  she  sends  to  him  anonymously ; 
and  he,  reading  it,  and  recognising  the  fair  hand  of  the  dis- 
tempered donor,  enjoys  the  joke  amazingly,  and  expresses  his 
opinion  of  it  and  her  by  scribbling  his  wicked  answer  on  the 
other  side.  Strange  bit  of  defunct  real  life,  thus  to  be  dug  up 
again  into  the  light !  The  departure  of  poor  Chatterton  for 
London  from  his  native  place  eighty-six  years  ago  was  not,  it 
would  thus  appear,  a  circumstance  which  all  Bristol  viewed 
with  indifference.  Whether  the  Clayfields,  the  Barretts,  and 
the  Catcotts  of  his  acquaintance,  cared  much  about  the  matter 
or  not — whether  Miss  Kumsey  shed  tears  or  not, — we  cannot 
say ;  but  here,  at  least,  was  one  fair  and  frail  denizen  of  some 
mean  Bristol  street,  in  whose  breast  Chatterton  left  a  rankling 
sense  of  wrong  or  jealousy,  and  who  was  powerfully  enough 
excited  by  the  news  of  his  departure,  to  immortalise  her  con- 
cern therein  by  penning  a  spiteful  letter,  in  which  she  told 

him  he  was  reported  to  be  "  going  to  the  D ,"  and  wished 

him  a  good  journey. 

Chatterton  was  not  going  to  the  D directly ;  he  was 

only  going  to  London,  to  follow  the  professional  walk  of  litera- 
ture. Persons  going  on  that  journey  from  the  provinces  now- 
a-days  (and  it  must  have  been  the  same  in  Chatterton'^  time) 


232  chatterton: 

usually  cany  tliree  tilings  with  them,  in  addition  to  the  mere 
essentials  of  luggage — a  little  money,  a  small  bundle  of  MSS., 
and  a  few  letters  of  introduction,  volunteered  by  well-meaning 
friends.  Let  us  see  how  Chatterton  was  furnished  in  these 
several  respects. 

As  regards  money,  the  most  essential  of  the  three,  but  very 
poorly,  we  fear !  It  would  throw  more  light  than  a  hundred 
disquisitions  on  the  real  truth  of  Chatterton's  London  career, 
were  we  able  to  calculate  to  the  precise  shilling  the  sum  of 
money  which  he  took  with  him  from  Bristol.  Unfortunately, 
there  are  no  data  for  such  a  calculation.  All  that  remains  to 
us  in  the  shape  of  information  on  this  point  is  a  vague  tradi- 
tion, the  exact  worth  of  which  we  do  not  know,  that  the 
understood  arrangement  among  the  charitable  persons  who 
had  agreed  to  get  up  a  little  subscription  for  him  against  his 
departure  was  that  they  should  subscribe  a  guinea  each. 
Subjecting  this  tradition  to  a  strict  act  of  judgment,  directed 
by  a  knowledge  of  the  laws  of  human  nature  in  general,  and 
the  circumstances  of  Chatterton's  Bristol  position  in  particular, 
we  should  say  that  the  entire  sum  that  could  possibly  be  in 
Chatterton's  purse  in  the  week  before  he  left  Bristol,  did  not 
(any  contribution  his  mother  could  make  included)  exceed  ten 
guineas.  Take  a  more  probable  estimate  still,  and  deduct  the 
expenses  of  the  outfit  and  journey,  and  we  may  say  Chatterton 
was  elated  with  the  prospect  of  invading  London  with  a  pecu- 
niary force  of  exactly  five  guineas. 

But  he  had  plenty  of  manuscripts.  In  one  bundle  he  had 
the  whole  of  the  Kowley  Poems  and  other  antiques — jElla  ; 
the  Bristowe  Tragedie ;  Goddwyn ;  The  Tournament ;  The 
Battle  of  Hastings  ;  The  Parliamente  of  Sjprytes,  &c.,  &c. ;  all 
written  and  finished  at  least  twelve  months  before,  and  form- 
ing matter  enough  to  fill,  if  printed,  one  considerable  volume; 
These,  if  he  could  either  dispose  of  them  in  the  mass  or  sell 
them  individually,  would  form  a  sufiicient  stock  to  begin  with. 
On  ^lla,  in  particular,  he  naturally  set  great  value.  It  was 
his  masterpiece ;  worth  a  great  deal  of  money,  even  as  an 
imitation  of  the  antique,  and  worth  ten  times  more  if  he  could 
succeed  in  getting  it  accepted  as  a  genuine  English  poem  of 


A   STORY   OF   THE   YEAR   1770.  235 

tlie  fifteenth  century.  Supposing  that  he  should  not  be  able 
to  part  with  it  advantageously  under  either  guise,  he  would 
at  any  rate  have  it  by  him,  to  be  printed  some  day  or  other  at 
his  own  expense,  and  to  make  his  fame  as  a  poet  and  anti- 
quarian !  Then  again,  in  another  bundle,  he  had  his  miscel- 
laneous modern  pieces  in  prose  and  in  verse — his  Kew  Gardens^ 
his  Consuliad,  and  other  such  satires  after  the  manner  of  Pope 
and  Churchill;  numerous  songs,  elegies,  and  other  poetical 
trifles ;  and  an  assortment  of  odds  and  ends  bearing  on  English 
antiquities.  For  these  he  cared  far  less  himself  than  for  his 
Eowley  poems  ;  but  he  had  already  ascertained  that  they  were 
more  disposable  as  literary  ware,  and  accordingly  he  had  of 
late  almost  abandoned  the  antique  vein  in  their  favour.  They 
might  be  of  use  to  him  in  his  dealings  with  the  magazines 
and  newspapers  ;  and  if  they  should  turn  out  not  to  be  exactly 
suitable,  he  had  a  ready  pen  and  a  head  full  of  all  kinds  of 
historical  knowledge,  and  should  find  no  difficulty — especially 
after  his  sister  had  forwarded  to  him  his  little  collection  of 
books  that  was  in  the  meantime  to  be  left  behind  under  her 
charge — in  throwing  off  other  such  papers  by  the  dozen  ! 

Lastly,  as  regards  the  matter  of  introductions.  It  may 
seem  strange  to  such  as  are  accustomed  to  think  such  things 
essential  to  a  young  man  migrating  from  his  native  place,  but 
we  positively  cannot  find  that  Chatterton  took  one  letter  of 
introduction  from  Bristol  with  him.  That  Matthew  Mease  may 
have  told  him  of  some  vintner  of  his  acquaintance  living 
somewhere  in  Whitechapel  that  would  be  glad  to  see  him,  if 
he  told  him  he  knew  Mat  Mease,  of  Bristol ;  that  Mr.  Clayfield, 
or  Mr.  Barrett,  or  even  his  master,  Mr.  Lambert,  may  have 
recommended  him  to  call,  at  his  leisure,  on  certain  well-to-do 
Smiths  or  Kobinsons  they  had  dealings  with  ;  that  his  younger 
friends,  the  Mr.  Carys  and  Mr.  Kudhalls,  the  Miss  Eumseys 
and  Miss  Webbs,  may  have  given  him  commissions  and 
instructions  destined  to  bring  him  into  connexion  with  metro- 
politan aunts  living  in  Camden  Town,  and  long-forgotten 
cousins  that  had  situations  in  the  Custom  House ;  nay,  that 
Mrs.  Chatterton  herself,  taxing,  with  the  grandmother's  help, 
her  genealogical  memory,  may  have  excogitated  for  the  occasion 


234  CHATTERTON  : 

a  stray  relative  or  two  in  London,  that  it  might  be  as  well  to 
pay  a  visit  to — is,  of  course,  extremely  probable.  But — and  the 
reason,  in  all  likelihood,  was  that  his  whole  circle  of  acquaint- 
ance could  not  muster  such  a  thing — not  a  single  letter  to  a 
literary  notability  did  this  "  Mad  Genius"  of  Bristol,  going  on 
his  expedition  to  set  the  Thames  on  fire,  take  in  his  portman- 
teau to  be  of  service  to  him.  Two  things  only  seem  to  have 
been  decided :  the  first,  that  on  arriving  in  London,  he  should 
go  to  lodge  at  the  house  of  a  Mr.  Walmsley,  a  plasterer,  in 
Shoreditch,  where  a  Mrs.  Ballance,  a  distant  relative  of  his 
mother's,  and  who  had  already  been  written  to  on  the  subject, 
resided ;  and  the  other,  that  his  first  care  on  his  arrival  should 
be  to  seek  out  Mr.  Edmunds,  at  the  Middlesex  Journal  office, 
in  Shoe-lane,  and  beat  up  the  editorial  quarters  of  the  Town 
and  Country  Magazine.  These  were  to  be  hi^foci  in  London; 
and  thence,  by  the  force  of  his  genius,  he  was  to  weave  out 
new  acquaintanceships,  and  spread  himself  in  all  directions  ! 
Nor,  on  the  whole,  was  this  plan  perhaps  the  worst.  Young 
authors  coming  to  London  to  set  the  Thames  on  fire,  are  by 
no  means  always  welcome  visitors  to  those  more  elderly 
practitioners  of  the  same  craft,  who,  having  become  convinced 
by  experience  of  the  incombustibility  of  the  river,  have 
settled  dovm  on  its  banks  with  chastened  hopes  and  more 
practical  intentions  ;  and  it  is  better,  in  the  long  run,  for  young 
authors  themselves  to  purchase  every  inch  of  way  they  make 
into  people's  good  graces  by  some  equivalent  addition  of  new 
work  done  and  tendered.  And  yet,  who  will  say  that  intro- 
ductions are  of  no  use  ?  The  kind  word  of  encouragement 
spoken  now  and  then  by  the  veteran  litttrateur  to  his  younger 
brother,  the  business  note  written  now  and  then  in  his  service 
when  anything  in  the  shape  of  work  turns  up,  the  friendly 
invitation  now  and  then  when  a  few  of  the  same  craft  are  to 
meet — these  little  courtesies,  which  it  is  in  the  power  of  intro- 
ductions, in  the  proportion  perhaps  of  one  effective  to  ten 
given,  to  procure,  how  much  wear  and  tear  of  heart  may  they 
not  save ;  how  many  paths  through  poverty  to  a  rank  London 
churchyard  may  they  not  make  smoother!  These,  a  little 
extended  and  adjusted,  would  of  themselves  constitute  in  these 


A  STORY   OF  THE   YEAR  1770.  235 

days,  and  while  the  more  systematic  promises  of  socialism  are 
in  abeyance,  a  very  good  organization  of  literature.  Nor, 
thank  God,  are  these  wanting.  That  hard,  austere  man  of 
letters,  young  poet,  who  receives  you  so  grimly,  is  so  severe 
on  your  fallacies  and  commonplaces,  says  not  a  word  to  flatter 
you,  and  would  almost  drive  you  from  literature  to  making 
shoes ;  let  but  an  opportunity  really  to  serve  you  present 
itself,  and  you  shall  find  that  man  as  true  as  steel,  and  as  kind 
as  a  woman  I  That  other  man  of  letters,  too,  with  the  flash- 
ing wit  and  the  impetuosity  that  stuns  and  blasts  you,  1  could 
tell  you  of  generous  actions  done  by  him !  And  him,  again, 
the  broad,  sagacious  man  of  abundant  humour  and  encyclo- 
paedic lore ;  or  him  on  whose  silver  hairs  the  honours  of  a 
long  celebrity  sit  so  gracefully — what  debts  of  gratitude,  were 
they  reckoned  up,  should  be  found  owing  by  contemporaries 
to  them  !  Such  men  there  are  in  London  in  our  own  days^ 
each  cordial  and  assisting  after  his  own  method  and  in  his 
own  sphere  ;  nor  was  London  wanting  in  such  in  the  days  of 
Chatterton.  Remembering  this,  and  thinking  with  ourselves 
at  the  same  time  which  special  man  out  of  the  700,000  and 
odd  souls  then  inhabiting  London,  it  might  have  been  best  for 
Chatterton  to  have  come  into  connexion  with,  we  cannot  but 
speculate  what  might  have  been  the  result  had  Chatterton 
taken  with  him  from  Bristol  but  one  letter  of  introduction, 
addressed,  suppose,  to  Oliver  Goldsmith.  "  To  Dr.  Goldsmith, 
at  No.  2,  Brick  Court,  Middle  Temple,  favoured  by  Mr.  Chat- 
terton"— one  cannot  help  lingering  in  fancy  over  the  probable 
consequences  of  a  letter  bearing  that  superscription.  But  it 
did  not  so  happen ! 

It  was  on  Tuesday,  the  24th  of  April,  and,  as  near  as  we 
can  guess,  between  eight  and  nine  in  the  evening,  that 
Chatterton,  w^ho  had  probably  never  been  a  single  whole  day 
out  of*  Bristol  before,  took  his  final  farewell  of  it.  By  the 
help  of  the  Gentleman  s  Magazine  for  April,  1771,  which 
contains  a  register  of  the  weather  for  the  same  month  in  the 
previous  year,  we  are  able  to  tell  pretty  exactly  the  state  of 
the  weather  at  the  time.  Monday,  the  23rd,  had  been  "  a 
cloudy  day,  very  cold,  with  some  little  hail  and  a  strong  north- 


236  CHATTERTON  : 

west  wind ;"  and  on  Tuesday,  tlie  24th,  though  the  wind  had 
veered  round  to  the  south-west,  it  was  still  "cold  and  cloudy." 
On  the  evening  of  that  cloudy  day,  when  it  is  already  almost 
dark,  and  the  streets  are  damp  with  approaching  rain,  three 
figures  stand  at  an  inn-door  in  Bristol,  waiting  for  the  starting 
of  the  London  coach.  They  are — Chatterton,  wrapped  up  for 
his  journey,  a  tight,  well-built  youth,  of  middle  size  ;  his  sister, 
a  grown  young  woman,  two  years  older  than  himself;  and  his 
mother,  a  sad-looking  elderly  person,  in  a  cloak.  Eound 
about  the  coach,  and  greatly  in  the  way  of  the  porters  who 
are  putting  on  the  luggage,  are  one  or  two  young  men  that 
have  gone  there  to  bid  Chatterton  once  more  good-bye.  They 
stand  and  talk  for  a  few  minutes  in  the  midst  of  the  bustle, 
while  tlie  passengers  are  hurrying  backwards  and  forwards 
between  the  coach  and  the  lighted  passage  of  the  inn.  At 
last  all  is  ready ;  the  luggage  is  put  up,  and  the  other  passen- 
gers have  taken  their  seats.  "  Good-bye,  Tom  ;  God  bless 
you ;  and  mind  to  write  as  soon  as  you  get  to  London," 
falters  the  widow  for  the  last  time.  Tom  hears  her  ;  bids  her 
good-bye,  his  sister  good-bye,  the  rest  good-bye ;  and  springs 
into  his  place  in  what  was  then  called  "  the  basket"  of  the 
coach,  {.  6.,  an  exterior  accommodation  slung  low  down  to  the 
body.  "  All  right,"  cries  the  guard,  and  blows  his  horn  ;  the 
coachman  cracks  his  whip,  the  horses'  hoofs  clatter,  and  away 
along  the  ill-lit  streets  goes  the  clumsy  vehicle  out  towards  the 
suburbs  of  Bristol,  Chatterton  slung  in  the  basket.  The  widow 
stands  at  the  inn-door  watching  it  till  it  disappears;  then, 
taking  her  daughter's  arm,  and  gathering  her  cloak  around 
her,  walks  home  with  a  heavy  heart  through  the  drizzle  ! 


PART  II.— LONDON. 


CHAPTER  I. — SHOREDITCH. 

Reader,  were  you  ever  in  Shoreditch  ?  If  you  are  an  inha- 
bitant of  London,  you  know  or  may  know  all  about  it ;  if  not, 
get  a  map  of  London,  and  you  will  see  that  the  locality  named 


A   STORY  OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  237 

Shoreditch  forms  part  of  one  of  the  great  highways  leading 
northwards  from  the  centre  of  the  city  towards  the  suburbs. 
The  part  of  this  highway  nearest  the  city,  including  about 
half  a  mile  of  houses  on  both  sides,  is  called  Bishopsgate- 
street,  from  the  fact  that  here  stood  one  of  the  ancient  gates 
of  the  city  erected  by  a  Saxon  bishop  of  the  seventh  century; 
beyond  that,  for  about  a  quarter  of  a  mile,  the  thoroughfare  is 
called  Norton  Folgate,  or,  as  it  was  originally  pronounced, 
the  Northern  Foldgate,  after  which,  extending  for  another 
quarter  of  a  mile,  and  terminating  in  Hackney,  is  Shoreditch 
proper,  the  principal  street  of  a  populous  parish  of  the  same 
name.  Tradition  ascribes  the  origin  of  the  name  to  the 
circumstance  that  Jane  Shore,  the  mistress  of  Edward  IV., 
ended  her  life  here, — 

"  Within  a  ditch  of  loathsome  scent. 
Which  carrion  dogs  did  much  frequent," 

as  the  ballad  says  :  but  old  Stow  settles  that  matter  by  say- 
ing he  could  prove  by  record  that  as  early  as  four  hundred 
years  before  his  time  the  place  had  been  called  Soersditch. 
However  this  may  be,  the  place  deserves  its  name.  There  is, 
indeed,  no  vestige  of  a  ditch  now  perceptible  to  one  passing 
through  the  locality,  whatever  a  more  strict  investigation 
might  disclose ;  but  the  neighbourhood  has  not  a  very  plea- 
sant or  wholesome  look.  The  aspect  which  Shoreditch  proper 
now  presents  is  that  of  a  broad,  bustling  street  of  old-fronted 
houses,  full  of  heterogeneous  shops,  some  of  them  exhibiting 
considerable  displays  of  cheap  hats,  haberdashery,  shoes, 
ready-made  clothes,  groceries,  and  the  like ;  but  others  be- 
longing rather  to  the  costermonger  species.  Narrower  streets, 
of  more  mean  appearance,  branch  out  from  it  on  both  sides. 
Altogether  Shoreditch  is  not  the  part  of  London  where  a  lite- 
rary man  of  the  present  day  would  voluntarily  seek  lodgings ; 
and,  as' there  does  not  seem  to  have  been  much  change  in  its 
importance  relatively  to  other  parts  of  the  metropolis  during 
the  last  eighty  years,  the  case  was  probably  much  the  same 
in  Chatterton's  time.  Indeed,  long  before  that,  Shoreditch, 
partly  perhaps  on  account  of  the  peculiar  suggestiveness  of  its 
name,  had  obtained  an  unenviable  reputation  as  a  low  neigh- 


238  CHATTERTON  : 

bourhood  ;  and  "  to  die  in  Slioreditch. "  was  synonymous,  in 
the  writings  of  the  wits  of  Dry  den's  time,  with  dying  like 
a  profligate,  and  having  hags  for  one's  nurses. 

It  was  here,  however,  that  Chatterton  lodged  when  he  first 
came  to  London.  We  have  already  mentioned  that  the  only 
definite  arrangement  he  seems  to  have  made  for  his  sojourn  in 
London,  before  leaving  Bristol,  consisted  in  his  having  written 
to  Mrs.  Ballance,  a  distant  relative  of  his  mother,  who  lived 
at  the  house  of  a  Mr.  Walmsley,  a  plasterer,  in  Shoreditch, 
asking  her  to  secure  a  lodging  for  him  against  his  arrival. 
Mrs.  Ballance,  whom  we  picture  as  an  elderly  female,  the 
widow  of  some  seafaring  man,  living  in  London  in  a  meagre, 
eleemosynary  way,  appears  to  have  replied  to  this  letter  by 
writing  to  Mrs.  Chatterton  that  Thomas  had  better  come  at 
once  to  Mr.  Walmsley's,  where  he  could  be  accommodated  in 
the  meantime  at  least,  and  where  she  would  do  her  best  to 
make  him  comfortable. 

Accordingly,  it  was  to  Mr.  Walmsley's,  in  Shoreditch,  that 
Chatterton,  on  his  arrival  in  London,  on  the  evening  of  Wed- 
nesday, the  25th  of  April,  1770,  contrived  to  make  his  way. 
Where  the  Bristol  coach  of  that  day  stopped,  we  do  not  know ; 
though,  doubtless,  even  that  might  be  ascertained  if  we  were 
very  anxious  about  it;  but,  presuming  that  it  was  in  the  yard 
of  some  inn  near  the  heart  of  the  city,  Chatterton  would  not 
have  had  far  to  go  before  introducing  himself  to  Mrs.  Ballance, 
if,  indeed,  the  good  woman  did  not  make  her  appearance  at 
the  coach  to  meet  her  young  relative,  and  help  him  to  carry 
home  his  small  allowance  ot  luggage.  It  shows  the  impa- 
tience and  the  spirit  of  the  young  stranger  thus  deposited  in 
the  streets  of  London,  that,  late  as  it  was  when  he  arrived  at 
Mr.  Walmsley's  (it  must  have  been  between  five  and  six 
o'clock  in  the  evening),  and  tired  as  he  must  have  been  with 
his  twenty  hours'  journey,  he  did  not  remain  within  doors  any 
time ;  but  having  seen  his  boxes  safe,  and  escaped  the  assi- 
duities of  Mrs.  Ballance,  sallied  out  for  a  ramble,  and  to  make 
calls  on  the  persons  through  whose  patronage  he  hoped  to 
gain  a  footing  in  literary  circles.  So  much,  at  least,  we 
infer  from  the  following  letter  to  his  mother,  written  on  the 


A  STORY   OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  239 

morning  of  the  26th,  after  having  slept  his  first  night  at 
Mr.  Walmsley's,  and  giving  an  account  of  his  journey  and 
his  first  proceedings  in  London : — 

"  London,  April  26th,  1770. 

"  Dear  Mother, — Here  I  am,  safe  and  in  high  spirits.  To  give  you  a  journal 
of  my  tour  wovild  not  be  unnecessary.  After  riding  in  the  basket  to  Brisling- 
ton,  I  mounted  the  top  of  the  coach,  and  rid  easy,  and  was  agreeably  enter- 
tained with  the  conversation  of  a  Quaker  in  dress,  but  little  so  in  personals  and 
behaviour.  This  laughing  Friend,  who  is  a  carver,  lamented  his  having  sent  his 
tools  to  Worcester,  as  otherwise  he  would  have  accompanied  me  to  London.  I 
left  him  at  Bath ;  when,  finding  it  rained  pretty  fast,  I  entered  an  inside  pas- 
senger to  Speenhamland,  the  half-way  stage,  paying  seven  shillings.  'Twas 
lucky  I  did  so,  for  it  snowed  all  night,  and  on  Marlborough  Downs  the  snow 
was  near  a  foot  high. 

"  At  seven  in  the  morning  I  breakfasted  at  Speenhamland,  and  then  mounted 
the  coach-box  for  the  remainder  of  the  day,  which  was  a  remarkable  fine  one. 
Honest  Gee-ho  complimented  me  with  assuring  me  that  I  sat  bolder  and  tighter 
than  any  person  who  ever  rid  with  him.  Dined  at  Stroud  most  luxuriously 
with  a  young  gentleman  who  had  slept  all  the  preceding  night  in  the  machine, 
and  an  old  mercantile  genius,  whose  school-boy  son  had  a  great  deal  of  wit,  as 
the  father  thought,  in  remarking  that  Windsor  was  as  old  as  our  Saviour's 
time. 

"  Got  into  London  about  five  o'clock  in  the  evening.  Called  upon  Mr. 
Edmunds,  Mr.  Fell,  Mr.  Hamilton,  and  Mr.  Dodsley.  Great  encouragement  from 
them;  all  approved  of  my  design.  Shall  soon  be  settled.  Call  upon  Mr. 
Lambert ;  show  him  this,  or  tell  him  if  I  deserve  a  recommendation,  he  woidd 
oblige  me  to  give  me  one ;  if  I  do  not,  it  will  be  beneath  him  to  take  notice  of 
me.  Seen  all  aunts,  cousins — all  weU — and  I  am  welcome.  Mr.  T.  Wensley  is 
alive,  and  coming  home.    Sister,  grandmother,  &c.  &c.  &c.,  remember. 

"  I  remain  your  dutiful  son, 

"  T.  Chatterton." 

It  is  a  curious  corroboration  of  Chatterton^s  account  of  the 
weather  during  his  journey,  that,  in  the  meteorological 
registers  of  the  Gentlemari's  Magazinej  Wednesday,  the  25th 
of  April,  17  70 —the  day  on  which  Chatterton  sat  beside  the 
driver  of  the  Bristol  coach  all  the  way  from  Speenhamland  to 
London — is  entered  as  a  day  of  "  smart  frost,  very  bright  and 
very  cold,"  snow  having  fallen  in  some  parts  of  the  country 
during  the  previous  night.  It  was  on  the  evening  of  this 
bright,  cold  day,  therefore,  that  Chatterton,  as  we  fancy,  set- 
ting out  from  Mr.  Walmsley's  between  five  and  six  o'clock, 
contrived,  by  inquiring  his  way  of  people  he  met,  to  pilot 
himself  along  Shoreditch,  Norton  Folgate,  and  Bishopsgate- 
street,  towards  the  city,  bent  as  he  was  on  calling  that  very 
evening  on  the  four  gentlemen  mentioned  in  his  letter — 
Mr.  Edmunds,  Mr.  Fell,  Mr.  Hamilton,  and  Mr.  Dodsley. 
Let  us  see  if  we  can  make  out  anything  respecting  these 


240  CHATTEETON : 

gentlemen  :  they  were  the  first  persons  Chatterton  visited  in 
London;  and  some  of  them  had  not  a  little  to  do  with  his 
subsequent  fate. 

Mr.  Edmunds  has  been  already  introduced  to  the  reader. 
He  was  the  proprietor,  editor,  and  publisher  of  the  Middlesex 
Journal^  a  bi-weekly  newspaper,  to  which,  we  have  seen, 
Chatterton  had  sent  several  communications  from  Bristol. 
His  offices  were  in  Shoe-lane,  Holborn.  Of  Mr.  Hamilton 
we  learn  something  from  that  interesting  collection  of  scraps, 
"  Nichols's  Literary  Anecdotes  of  the  Eighteenth  Century.'' 
He  was  the  printer  and  proprietor  of  The  Town  and  Country 
Magazine,  in  which  capacity  Chatterton  had,  as  we  know, 
for  some  time  corresponded  with  him.  He  was  the  son  of 
one  Archibald  Hamilton,  a  Scotchman,  who  having  been 
obliged  to  quit  Edinburgh  in  1736,  for  having  been  actively 
concerned  in  the  Porteous  riot,  had  settled  in  London  as  a 
printer,  and  had  made  a  considerable  fortune  there.  The 
son,  Archibald,  enjoying  the  benefit  of  his  father's  connexion, 
had  also  set  up  as  a  printer.  He  had,  says  Nichols,  two 
printing  offices,  one  "  in  the  country,  on  the  road  between 
High  gate  and  Finchley,''  the  other  in  town,  "  near  St. 
John's  Gate,  Clerkenwell ;  "  and  it  was  probably  in  allusion 
to  this  circumstance  that,  when  he  started  a  new  magazine, 
in  the  beginning  of  1769,  he  named  it  The  Town  and 
Country  Magazine.  The  magazine,  Nichols  informs  us,  had 
"  a  prodigious  sale."  Nichols  also  gives  us  some  particulars 
relative  to  Dodsley,  in  addition  to  those  already  communi- 
cated to  the  reader.  Having  succeeded  his  brother  Eobert, 
whose  junior  he  was  by  twenty-two  years,  in  the  year  1759, 
James  Dodsley  had  carried  on  the  bookselling  business  in 
Pall  Mall  so  profitably  as  to  be  already  a  wealthy  man. 
-When  he  died  in  1797,  he  left  a  fortune  of  70,000/.;  and  a 
good  part  of  this  sum  must  have  been  accumulated  before 
1770,  when  he  was  forty-five  years  of  age.  "  By  a  habit  of 
excluding  himself  from  the  world,"  says  Nichols,  *'Mr. 
James  Dodsley,  who  certainly  possessed  a  liberal  heart  and 
a  strong  understanding,  had  acquired  many^ peculiarities." 
One  of  these  is  mentioned  as  specially  characteristic.     '*  He 


A  STORY   OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  241 

kept  a  carriage  many  years,  but  studiously  wished  his 
friends  should  not  know  it ;  nor  did  he  ever  use  it  on  the 
eastern  side  of  Temple  Bar."  The  inscription  on  the  tablet 
erected  to  the  memory  of  the  bookseller  in  St.  James's 
Church,  Westminster,  where  he  was  buried,  is  to  the  same 
effect.  "  He  was  a  man,"  says  the  epitaph,  "  of  a  retired 
and  contemplative  turn  of  mind,  though  engaged  in  a  very 
extensive  line  of  public  business ;  he  was  upright  and 
liberal  in  his  dealings,  a  friend  to  the  afflicted  in  general, 
and  to  the  poor  of  this  parish  in  particular," — in  fact,  an 
eccentric,  shy,  good  sort  of  man.  Finally,  as  regards  Mr. 
Fell.  From  what  Chatterton  says  of  him,  we  learn  that  he 
was  printer,  publisher,  and  editor  of  the  Freeholder's  Maga- 
zine, a  periodical  conducted  in  the  interest  of  Wilkes,  and  to 
which,  as  well  as  to  the  Town  and  Country,  Chatterton  had 
recently  sent  articles  for  insertion.  We  imagine  him,  on 
some  shadow  of  authority,  to  have  been  a  needy,  nondescript 
kind  of  publisher,  with  a  place  of  business  in  Paternoster 
Kow,  and  not  nearly  so  respectable  as  either  Edmunds  or 
Hamilton,  not  to  speak  of  Dodsley. 

Such  were  the  four  persons  upon  whom  we  are  to  imagine 
the  impetuous  young  fellow,  who  had  just  come  off  the  Bristol 
coach,  dropping  in  unexpectedly  between  light  and  dark  on 
a  cold  April  evening,  eighty- six  years  ago.  His  hopes  from 
Edmunds  were,  of  course,  chiefly  in  connexion  with  the 
Middlesex  Journal,  for  which  he  could  furnish  poems  and 
paragraphs.  Through  Fell  he  might  get  a  footing  in  the 
Freeholder  s  Magazine,  and  whatever  else  of  a  literary  kind 
might  be  going  on  under  the  auspices  of  Wilkes.  From 
Hamilton  he  looked  for  some  definite  and  paying  engagement 
on  the  Town  and  Country.  From  Dodsley  his  expectations 
were  probably  still  higher.  Besides  being  the  publisher  of  the 
Annual  Begister,  and  the  friend  of  Burke  and  other  notable 
political  men,  Dodsley  was  a  bookseller  on  a  large  scale,  and 
a  publisher  of  poetry ;  it  was  to  him  that  Chatterton  had  applied 
by  letter  sixteen  months  before  as  a  likely  person  to  publish 
his  j^lla ;  one  or  two  letters  had  probably  passed  between 
them  since  ;  and  in  resolving  to  introduce  himself  personally 

R 


242  CHATTERTON : 

to  this  magnate  of  books,  Chatterton  had,  doubtless,  dreams 
not  only  of  the  opening  of  the  Annual  Register  to  his  lucubra- 
tions, but  also  of  the  appearance  of  his  Rowley  performances 
some  day  or  other  in  the  form  of  one  or  more  well-printed 
vcjumes,  the  wonder  of  all  the  critics.  It  was  with  these  views 
on  the  persons  severally  concerned,  that  Chatterton  made  his 
four  rapid  calls.  The  enterprise  was  certainly  less  Quixotic 
than  if  a  young  literary  provincial,  now-a-days,  were,  on  the 
first  day  of  his  being  in  London,  to  resolve  at  once  to  call 
on  Murray  or  Longman,  then  to  beat  up  the  office  of  the  Daily 
News  in  search  of  the  editor;  after  that  to  knock  at  Mr. 
Parker's  door  to  seek  an  engagement  on  Fraser ;  and  finally  to 
go  and  see  what  could  be  done  on  Dickens's  Household  Words, 
Still,  making  all  allowance  for  the  difference  in  point  of  editorial 
and  bibliopolic  dignity  between  that  day  and  this,  the  idea 
of  achieving  interviews  with  four  difierent  editors  and  pub- 
lishers in  one  ramble  was  somewhat  bold.  As  regards 
mere  time  and  distance,  to  compass  calls,  in  such  circum- 
stances, on  four  different  individuals — one  of  these  living  in 
Shoe  Lane,  another  at  St.  John's  Gate,  Clerkenwell,  a  third 
in  Pall  Mall,  and  the  fourth  somewhere  else— can  have  been 
no  easy  task.  But  Chatterton  was  a  resolute  youth,  with 
plenty  of  the  faculty  of  self-assertion,  and  capable,  as  we 
imagine,  not  only  of  making  four  calls  in  one  walk,  but 
also  of  going  through  each  without  any  unnecessary  degree 
of  bashfulness.  We  have  no  doubt  that  he  saw  Hamilton, 
Fell,  Edmunds,  and  Dodsley  himself,  with  the  most  perfect 
self-assurance ;  that  he  explained  his  case  to  them,  and  stated 
what  he  wanted  from  them,  very  distinctly;  and  that  with 
the  advantage  he  had  in  having  corresponded  with  all  of 
them  before,  he  came  off  from  the  interviews  in  a  very  satis- 
factory manner.  As  to  how  they  received  him,  and  what 
they  said  to  him,  we  have  but  his  own  words  to  his  mother : 
— "  Great  encouragement  from  them  :  all  approved  of  my 
design."  The  meaning  of  this  is  somewhat  problematical. 
Dodsley,  we  imagine,  nervous  and  shy  person  as  he  was, 
may  have  been  not  a  little  discomposed  by  the  talk  of  the 
impetuous  young  visitor  who  had  so  unceremoniously  burst 


A   STORY  OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  243 

in  upon  him ;  and,  while  listening  with  tolerable  courtesy  to 
what  he  said,  may  have  been  mentally  resolving  to  have 
nothing  more  to  do  with  that  odd  Bristol  lad,  if  once  he 
could  get  him  out.  Hamilton  and  Edmunds,  we  fancy, 
were  civil  and  general,  with  perhaps  an  intention  to  let  the 
lad  write  for  them,  if  he  chose  to  do  so.  Fell,  as  a  needier 
man,  and  more  ready  to  catch  at  a  promising  literary  recruit, 
was,  we  imagine,  the  most  cordial  of  all. 

And  so,  tired  and  yet  happy,  the  young  stranger  bent 
his  steps  homeward  in  the  direction  of  Shoreditch.  Ah !  we 
wonder  if,  in  passing  along  Shoe  Lane  after  his  interview 
with  Edmunds,  brushing  with  his  shoulder  the  ugly  black 
wall  of  that  workhouse  burying-ground  on  the  site  of  which 
Farringdon  market  now  stands,  any  presentiment  occurred 
to  him  of  a  spectacle  which,  four  short  months  afterwards, 
that  very  spot  was  to  witness — these  young  limbs  of  his, 
now  so  full  of  life,  then  closed  up  stark  and  unclaimed  in  a 
workhouse  shell,  and  borne  carelessly  and  irreverently  by  one 
or  two  men  along  that  very  wall  to  a  pauper's  hasty  grave  ! 
Ah  !  no,  he  paces  all  unwittingly,  poor  young  heart,  that  spot 
of  his  London  doom,  where  even  I,  remembering  him,  shudder 
to  tears ;  for  God,  in  his  mercy,  hangs  the  veil ! 

In  what  precise  part  of  Shoreditch  that  house  of  Mr. 
Walmsley  was  where  Chatterton  lodged  when  he  first  came 
to  London,  and  to  which,  on  that  memorable  day,  he 
returned  through  many  dark  and  strange  streets,  we  do  not 
know.  London  Directories  of  the  year  1770  are  not  things 
easy  to  be  found ;  and,  could  we  fijid  one,  we  should  not  be 
very  certain  to  find  Mr.  Walmsley's  name  in  it.  In  these 
circumstances  the  literary  antiquary,  as  he  walks  along 
Shoreditch,  may  be  allowed  to  single  out,  as  the  object  of 
his  curiosity,  any  old-looking  house  he  pleases  along  the 
whole  length  of  the  thoroughfare  on  either  side ;  it  being 
stipulated  only  that  the  house  so  selected  shall  be  con- 
ceivable as  having  once  been  the  abode  of  a  plasterer.  For 
our  part,  we  have  an  incommunicable  impression  as  if  the 
house  were  to  be  sought  in  the  close  vicinity  of  the  present 
terminus  of  the  Eastern  Counties  Eailway,  or  where  Shore- 

r2 


244  CHATTERTON 

ditcli  passes  into  Norton  Folgate.  Let  that  fancy  stand, 
therefore,  in  lieu  of  a  better. 

Here  then  Chatterton,  tired  with  his  long  walk  through 
the  streets,  slept  his  first  night  in  London.  Here,  on  the 
following  morning,  he  breakfasted  in  the  company  of  his 
relative,  Mrs.  Ballance,  giving  her  the  news  of  Bristol,  and 
receiving  from  her  such  bits  of  news  in  return  as  she  had  to 
communicate;  and  amongst  them  the  intelligence  conveyed 
in  his  letter  home,  that  Mr.  T.  Wensley — a  seaman  or  petty 
officer,  as  we  learn  from  a  subsequent  allusion,  on  board  a 
King's  ship,  but  a  native  of  Bristol,  and  on  that  account 
known  to  Mrs.  Chatterton  and  his  sister — was  alive,  and  on 
his  way  home.  Hence  also  he  sets  out  to  visit  those  aunts 
and  cousins  mentioned  in  the  letter  as  being  all  well  and 
glad  to  see  him ;  and  who,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  did  not  live  far 
from  Shoreditch.  Here,  some  time  or  other  in  the  course  of 
the  day — Thursday,  the  26th  ;  his  first  real  day  in  London, 
and  '•  a  very  coarse,  wet,  cold  day"  it  was,  says  the  Gentle- 
mans  Magazine — he  writes  the  letter  in  question,  so  as  to 
send  it  by  that  day's  post.  And  here,  during  the  remaining 
days  of  that  month, — Friday,  the  27th,  "  a  very  coarse  wet 
day,  but  not  so  cold;  "  Saturday,  the  28th,  "  a  heavy  morn- 
ing, bright  afternoon,  cold  wind ;  "  Sunday  the  29th,  "  a  very 
bright  day,  hot  sun,  cold  wind;"  and  Monday  the  30th, 
"  chiefly  bright,  flying  clouds,  no  rain,  and  warm  ;  " — he  soon 
finds  himself  fairly  domiciled,  becoming  more  familiar  with 
the  Walmsleys  and  Mrs.  Ballance,  whom  he  sees  in  the 
mornings ;  and  starting  off  every  forenoon  for  a  walk  along 
Norton  Folgate  and  Bishopsgate  Street,  towards  those  quar- 
ters of  the  metropolis  where  the  chief  attractions  lay. 

Chatterton  lived  in  Mr.  Walmsley's  house  in  Shoreditch 
about  six  weeks  in  all,  or  from  the  24th  of  April  till  the 
beginning  of  June.  We  are  fortunately  able  to  give  a  some- 
what particular  account  of  the  economy  of  Mr.  Walmsley's 
family,  and  of  the  kind  of  accommodation  which  Chatterton  had 
there,  and  the  kind  of  impression  he  produced  on  the  various 
members  of  it  during  his  stay.  The  Kev.  Sir  Herbert  Croft, 
already  alluded  to  as  one  who  took  much  pains — more  pains. 


A  STORY  OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  245 

In  fact,  than  anybody  else  from  that  time  to  this — to  inform 
himself  of  the  real  particulars  of  Chatterton's  life,  took  the 
judicious  plan  of  hunting  out  the  Walmsley  family  in  Shore- 
ditch,  while  the  memory  of  Chatterton  was  still  fresh,  and 
ascertaining  all  he  could  from  them  regarding  the  habits  of 
the  singular  being  whose  brief  stay  among  them  had  been  an 
event  of  such  consequence  in  the  history  of  their  humble 
household.  The  following  is  an  extract  from  the  reverend 
baronet's  Love  and  Madness,  embodying  all  he  could  gather 
about  Chatterton  from  this  source : — 

"  The  man  and  woman  where  he  first  lodged,  are  still  (1780)  living  in  the 
same  house.  He  is  a  plasterer.  They,  and  their  nephew  and  niece  (the  latter 
about  as  old  as  Chatterton  would  be  now,  the  former  three  years  younger), 
and  Mrs.  Ballance,  who  lodged  in  the  house  and  desired  them  to  let  Chatterton, 
her  relation,  live  there  also — have  been  seen.  The  little  collected  from  them 
you  shall  have  in  their  own  words. 

*'  Mrs.  BaUance  says  he  was  as  proud  as  Lucifer.  He  very  soon  quarrelled 
with  her  for  calling  him  *  Cousin  Tommy,'  and  asked  her  if  she  ever  heard  of  a 
poet's  being  called  Tommy ;  but  she  assured  him  that  she  knew  nothing  of 
poets,  and  only  wished  he  would  not  set  up  for  a  gentleman.  Upon  her  recom- 
mending it  to  him  to  get  into  some  office,  when  he  had  been  in  town  two  or 
three  weeks,  he  stormed  about  the  room  like  a  madman,  and  frightened  her 
njot  a  little,  by  telling  her  that  he  hoped,  with  the  blessing  of  God,  very  soon 
to  be  sent  prisoner  to  the  Tower,  which  would  make  his  fortune.  He  would 
often  look  steadfastly  in  a  person's  face,  without  speaking,  or  seeming  to  see  the 
person  for  a  quarter  of  an  hour  or  more,  till  it  was  quite  frightful ;  during  all 
which  time  (she  supposes,  from  what  she  has  since  heard)  his  thoughts  were 
gone  about  something  else.  He  frequently  declared  that  he  should  settle  the 
nation  before  he  had  done  :  but  how  could  she  think  that  her  poor  cousin 
T'omniy  was  so  great  a  man  as  she  now  finds  he  was  ?  His  mother  should 
have  written  word  of  his  greatness,  and  then,  to  be  sure,  she  would  have 
humoured  the  gentleman  accordingly. 

"  Mr,  Walmsley  observed  little  in  him,  but  that  there  was  something  manly 
and  pleasing  about  him,  and  that  he  did  not  dislike  the  wenches. 

"  Mrs.  Walmsley's  account  is,  that  she  never  saw  any  harm  of  him — that  he 
never  mislisted  her,  but  was  always  very  civil  whenever  they  met  in  the  house 
by  accident ;  that  he  woxild  never  suffer  the  room  in  which  he  used  to  read  and 
wi'ite  to  be  swept,  because,  he  said,  poets  hated  brooms ;  that  she  told  him  she 
did  not  know  any  thing  poet-folks  were  good  for,  but  to  sit  in  a  dirty  cap  and 
gown  in  a  gaiTet,  and  at  last  to  be  starved ;  that,  during  the  nine  (?)  weeks  he  was 
at  her  house,  he  never  stayed  out  after  the  family  hoiu-s  except  once,  when  he 
did  not  come  home  all  night,  and  had  been,  she  heard,  poeting  a  song  about  the 
streets.  (This  night,  Mrs  Ballance  says,  she  knows  he  lodged  at  a  relation's 
because  Mr.  Walmsley's  house  was  shut  up  when  he  came  home.) 

**  The  niece  says,  for  her  part,  she  always  took  him  more  for  a  mad  boy  than 
anything  else,  he  would  have  such  flights  and  vagaries  ;  that,  but  for  his  face, 
and  her  knowledge  of  his  age,  she  should  never  have  thought  him  a  boy,  he 
was  so  manly,  and  so  much  himself ;  that  no  women  came  after  him,  nor  did 
she  know  of  any  connexion — but  still  that  he  was  a  sad  rake,  and  terribly  fond 
of  women,  and  would  sometimes  be  saucy  to  her ;  that  he  ate  what  he  chose  to 
have,  with  his  relation,  Mrs.  Ballance,  who  lodged  in  the  house ;  but  that  he  never 
touched  meat,  and  drank  only  water,  and  seemed  to  live  on  the  air.  .  ,  .  The 
niece  adds,  that  he  was  good-tempered,  and  agreeable,  and  obliging,  but  sadly 


246  CHATTERTON : 

proud  and  haughty  :  nothing  was  too  good  for  him ;  nor  was  anything  to  he  too 
good  for  his  grandmother,  mother,  and  sister,  hereafter.  .  .  .  That  he  used  to  sit 
up  almost  all  night,  reading  and  writing ;  and  that  her  brother  said  he  was 
afraid  to  lie  with  him — for,  to  be  sure,  he  was  a  spirit,  and  never  slept ;  for  he 
never  came  to  bed  till  it  was  morning,  and  then,  for  what  he  saw,  never  closed 
his  eyes. 

"  The  nephew  (Chatterton's  bed-fellow  during  the  first  six  weeks  he  lodged 
there)  says  that,  notwithstanding  his  pride  and  haughtiness,  it  was  impossible 
to  help  liking  him ;  that  he  lived  chiefly  upon  a  bit  of  bread,  or  a  tart,  and 
some  water — but  he  once  saw  him  take  a  sheep's  tongue  out  of  his  pocket ; 
that  Chatterton,  to  his  knowledge,  never  slept  while  they  lay  together ;  that  he 
never  came  to  bed  till  very  late,  sometimes  three  or  four  o'clock,  and  was 
always  awake  when  he  (the  nephew)  waked,  and  got  up  at  the  same  time,  about 
five  or  six ;  that  almost  every  morning  the  floor  was  covered  with  pieces  of 
paper  not  so  big  as  sixpences,  into  which  he  had  torn  what  he  had  been  writing 
before  he  came  to  bed." 

Bating  some  coarse  spitefiilness,  if  we  may  so  call  it,  in  the 
recollection  of  Chatterton's  haughty  airs,  apparent  in  the  evi- 
dence of  Mrs.  Ballance  and  the  niece,  and  a  slight  tendency 
to  the  marvellous  apparent  in  that  of  the  nephew  (who  was 
but  a  boy  of  fourteen  when  Chatterton  shared  the  room  with 
him),  the  above  presents,  we  believe,  a  picture  of  Chatterton 
as  he  appeared  in  the  narrow  Walmsley  circle,  as  accurate  as 
it  is  vivid.  Walmsley  himself  we  rather  like.  We  fancy 
him  an  easy  sort  of  fellow,  not  troubling  himself  much  about 
domestic  matters,  going  out  to  his  work  in  the  morning,  and 
leaving  his  lodger  to  the  somewhat  intrusive  care  of  the  women- 
folks. After  he  is  gone,  we  are  to  suppose,  Chatterton  spends 
the  morning  in  reading  and  writing,  while  Mrs.  Walmsley, 
Mrs.  Ballance,  and  the  niece  are  slatterning  about  the  house ; 
and  generally,  as  the  forenoon  advances,  he  goes  out  for  his 
walk  towards  the  places  of  London  resort.  Along  Norton 
Folgate,  and  Bishopsgate  Street,  passing  crowds  of  people  and 
hackney-coaches,  and  glancing,  with  the  eye  of  an  antiquarian 
and  a  connoisseur  in  old  architecture,  at  such  buildings  of 
antique  aspect  as  were  and  are  conspicuous  in  that  thorough- 
fare— the  old  church  of  St.  Helen's,  the  old  church  of  St. 
Ethelburga,  and  that  much-admired  remnant  of  the  civic 
architecture  of  the  fifteenth  century,  Crosby  Hall,  or  Crosby 
Place,  mentioned  in  Shakespeare's  Richard  III. :  let  the  metro- 
politan reader  distinctly  figure  this  as  the  usual  direction  fol- 
lowed by  Chatterton  in  his  walks  from  Mr.  Walmsley's,  in 
Shoreditch.     Beyond  that,  his  wanderings  may  be  various  ; 


A  STORY  OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  247 

frequently,  of  course,  along  the  main  line  of  Comhill,  past  the 
Bank,  as  it  then  was,  and  the  then  new  Mansion  House,  into 
Cheapside ;  thence  slowly  along  the  purlieus  of  St.  Paul's, 
with  a  peculiar  lingering  among  the  book-shops  of  Pater- 
noster Eow ;  and  further,  down  Ludgate  Hill,  and  up  Fleet 
Street,  towards  Temple  Bar  and  the  Strand.  Visits  of  busi- 
ness were,  we  may  be  sure,  not  neglected :  and,  in  achieving 
his  transits  from  one  place  to  another,  Chatterton,  like  the 
rest  of  us,  may  have  been  guilty  of  the  egregious  folly  of 
attempting  short  cuts,  and  so  may  have  bewildered  himself 
among  mazes  of  mean  streets,  proving  their  populousness  by 
swarms  of  children,  yet  never  to  be  seen  by  him,  or  by  any- 
body else,  more  than  once. 

Oh  !  the  weariness  of  these  aimless  walks  of  a  young  lite- 
rary adventurer,  without  a  purse  or  a  friend,  in  the  streets  of 
London  I  The  perpetual  and  anxious  thought  within,  which 
scarcely  any  street-distraction  can  amuse ;  the  listlessness  with 
which,  on  coming  to  the  parting  of  two  ways,  one  suffers  the 
least  accident  to  determine  which  way  one  will  take,  both 
being  indifferent ;  the  vain  castle-building  in  sanguine 
moments,  when  thousands  of  pounds  seem  possible  and  near ; 
the  utter  prostration  of  spirit  at  other  moments,  when  one 
inspects  the  shivering  beggar  that  passes  with  new  interest,  as 
but  another  form  of  one's  self,  and  when  every  glimpse  of  a 
damp,  grassless  churchyard  through  a  railing  acts  as  a  horrible 
premonition  of  what  may  be  the  end ;  the  curious  and  habitual 
examination  of  physiognomies  met  as  one  goes  along;  the 
occasional  magic  of  a  bright  eye,  or  a  lovely  form,  shooting 
a  pang  through  the  heart,  and  calling  up,  it  may  be,  the 
image  of  a  peerless  one,  distant,  denied,  but  unforgotten,  till 
the  soul  melts  in  very  tenderness,  and  all  the  past  is  around 
one  again  ;  the  sudden  start  from  such  a  mood,  the  flush,  the 
clenched  hand,  the  set  teeth,  the  resolve,  the  manly  hope,  the 
dream  of  a  home  quiet,  and  blest  after  all  with  one  sweet 
presence ;  and  then,  after  that,  the  more  composed  gait,  and 
the  saunter  towards  the  spots  one  prefers,  till  the  waning  day, 
or  the  need  to  work  and  eat,  brings  one  back  fatigued  to  the 
lonely  room !     And  so  from  day  to  day  a  repetition  of  the 


248  CHATTERTON  : 

same  process.  Ah,  London,  London!  thou  perpetual  home 
of  a  shifting  multitude,  how  many  a  soul  is  there  not  within 
thee  at  this  hour,  who,  listening  to  that  peculiar  roar  of  thine, 
which  shows  the  concourse  of  myriads  in  thee,  all  cooperating 
for  their  ends,  and  yet  feeling  excluded,  like  an  unclaimed 
atom,  from  the  midst  of  thy  bustle,  might  cry  aloud  to  thee, 
and  say,  "  I,  too,  am  strong ;  I  am  young ;  I  am  willing ; 
I  can  do  something ;  leave  me  not  out ;  attend  to  me ;  make 
room  for  me  ;  devise  the  means  of  absorbing  me,  and  such  as 
me,  within  thy  just  activity;  and  defer  not  till  I  and  they 
make  thee  hearken  with  our  shrieks  !"  But  London  rolls  on; 
and  men,  young  and  old,  do  demand  impossible  things !  If  it 
defies  us  to  make  the  medium  without  conform,  some  power 
is  at  least  left,  to  shape  and  rule  the  spirit  within ! 

Chatterton,  we  believe,  came  to  London  with  as  practical 
and  resolute  a  spirit  as  any  literary  adventurer  before  or  since. 
His  excitement  with  his  change  of  position,  his  confidence  in 
being  able  to  make  his  way,  and  his  activity  in  availing  him- 
self of  every  means  of  doing  so,  seem  to  have  been  really 
prodigious.  Hence,  probably,  his  first  walks  in  London  were 
as  little  listless  as  was  possible  in  the  circumstances.  Instead 
of  idle  and  aimless  saunterings,  such  as  we  have  described, 
many  of  his  London  walks  during  the  first  week  or  two  of  his 
stay  at  Shoreditch  must  have  been  direct  visits  from  spot  to 
spot,  and  from  person  to  person.  By  no  means  dijQSdent  or 
bashful,  and,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  perfectly  heart-whole  as 
regarded  all  the  Bristol  beauties  he  had  left,  he  probably 
wasted  less  time  than  many  others  with  less  genius  would 
have  wasted,  in  useless  regrets  and  pointless  reveries.  Com- 
pared with  his  position  at  Bristol,  as  the  miserable  drudge  of 
a  lawyer's  office,  his  present  life,  as  a  free  literary  rover  in 
London,  appeared  to  him,  doubtless,  all  but  paradisaic.  To 
work  in  the  morning  in  his  lodging  in  Shoreditch,  with  some- 
times a  saucy  word  for  his  landlady's  niece,  though  not  so 
saucy  by  half  as  the  slut  would  have  liked ;  then  to  go  out  to 
make  calls,  and  see  sights  in  various  quarters,  buying  a  tart 
at  a  pastrycook's  for  his  dinner,  spending  a  shilling,  or,  per- 
haps, two,  in  other  little  indulgences,  and  quite  alive  always 


A  STOEY   OF  THE  YEAR   1770.  249 

to  the  distraction  of  a  pretty  face  wherever  he  chanced  to  be  ; 
then  to  come  home  again  at  an  earlier  or  a  later  hour,  and  to 
sit  up  half  the  night  writing  and  tearing  papers,  greatly  to 
the  bewilderment  and  alarm  of  that  very  ill-used  boy.  Master 
Walmsley,  who  lost,  we  dare  say,  half  his  natural  allowance 
of  sleep  in  watching  his  movements  from  beneath  the  blankets: 
—here  was  happiness,  here  was  liberty,  here  was  a  set  of  con- 
ditions in  which  to  commence  the  process  of  setting  fire  to  the 
Thames  !  So,  at  least,  it  seemed  to  Chatterton  himself  during 
his  first  fortnight  in  London ;  for  when  Mrs.  Ballance,  at  the 
end  of  that  period,  ventured  to  suggest  that  he  should  try  to 
get  into  some  office,  we  have  seen  what  thanks  the  poor  woman 
got.  To  be  sure,  had  Mrs.  Chatterton  sent  her  word  before- 
hand what  a  great  man  Cousin  Tommy  was,  she  would  have 
humoured  the  gentleman  accordingly!  But  how  was  she  to 
kr.ow  ?    Ah  !  how,  indeed  ? 


CHAPTER  II. 

TOWN-TALK   EIGHTY  YEARS   AGO. 

In  coming  to  London,  Chatterton,  of  course,  came  into  the 
midst  of  all  the  politics  and  current  talk  of  the  day.  Bristol, 
indeed,  as  a  bustling  and  mercantile  place,  had  had  its  share 
of  interest  in  the  general  on-goings  of  the  nation ;  and  regu- 
larly, as  the  coach  had  brought  down  the  last  new  materials 
of  gossip  from  London,  the  politicians  of  Bristol  had  gone 
through  the  budget,  and  given  the  Bristol  imprimatur,  or  the 
reverse,  to  the  opinions  pronounced  by  the  metropolitan  autho- 
rities. Sometimes,  too,  Bristol,  from  its  western  position  and 
its  extensive  shipping  connexions,  might  have  the  start  even 
of  London  in  a  bit  of  American  news.  On  the  whole,  how- 
ever, going  from  Bristol  to  London  was,  as  regarded  oppor- 
tunities of  insight  into  the  affairs  of  the  day,  like  going  from 
darkness  into  light,  from  the  suburbs  to  the  centre,  from  the 
shilling  gallery  to  the  pit-stalls.  Let  us  see  what  were  the 
pieces  (small  enough  they  seem  now),  in  course  of  performance 
on  the  stage  of  British  life  eighty  years  ago,  when  Chatterton 


250  CHATTERTON : 

had  thus  just  sliifted  his  place  in  the  theatre  ;  in  other  words, 
what  were  the  topics  which  afforded  matter  of  talk  to  that 
insatiable  gossip,  the  Town,  towards  the  end  of  April  and 
during  the  whole  of  May,  1770. 

First,  then,  and  monopolising  nearly  the  whole  ground  of 
the  domestic  politics  of  the  time,  was  the  everlasting  case  of 
Wilkes  and  Liberty,  begun  seven  years  before,  when  Chatterton 
was  a  boy  at  Colston's  school,  but  still  apparently  far  from  a 
conclusion.  There  had  been  a  change,  however,  in  the  relative 
situations  of  the  parties  in  this  case. 

Among  the  most  earnest  defenders  of  Wilkes  and  advocates 
of  the  right  of  free  election,  which  they  considered  uncon- 
stitutionally violated  in  his  case,  were  the  authorities  of  the 
Corporation  of  the  City  of  London,  then  under  the  mayoralty 
of  the  celebrated  Beckford.  With  other  corporations  and 
public  bodies,  they  had  sent  in  petitions  to  the  King  on  the 
subject.  These  petitions  having  been  ungraciously  received, 
Beckford  and  his  colleagues  had  had  the  boldness  to  wait  on 
the  King  (March  14th),  and  address  a  personal  remonstrance 
to  him.     The  King's  reply  was  as  follows : — 

"  I  shall  always  be  ready  to  receive  the  requests  and  to  listen  to  the  com- 
plaints of  my  subjects ;  but  it  gives  me  great  concern  to  find  that  any  of  them 
should  have  been  so  far  misled  as  to  offer  me  an  address  and  remonstrance,  the 
contents  of  which  I  cannot  but  consider  as  disrespectful  to  me,  injixrious  to  my 
parliament,  and  irreconcilable  to  the  principles  of  the  constitution." 

Having  read  this  speech,  the  King  gave  the  Lord  Mayor 
and  others  of  the  deputation  his  hand  to  kiss ;  after  which,  as 
they  were  withdrawing,  he  turned  round  to  his  courtiers  and 
burst  out  laughing.  "  Nero  fiddled  whilst  Rome  was  burn- 
ing,'^ was  the  grandiloquent  remark  of  Parson  Home  on  the 
occasion ;  and,  though  this  was  a  little  too  strong,  it  is  certain 
that  the  City-people  were  very  angry.  So,  out  of  revenge, 
and  partly  as  a  compensation  to  Wilkes  for  his  exclusion  from 
the  House  of  Commons,  they  made  Wilkes  an  alderman.  The 
patriot  had  hardly  been  out  of  prison  a  week  when,  on  24th  of 
April — the  day  on  which  Chatterton  left  Bristol — he  was  sworn 
in  as  alderman  for  the  ward  of  Farringdon  Without,  and 
received  a  magnificent  banquet  on  the  occasion.  This  acces- 
sion of  Wilkes  to  the  Corporation  of  the  City  of  London,  was 


A  STORY  OF  THE   YEAK   1770.  251 

not  only  a  kind  of  defiance  to  the  Court  and  the  ruling  party  ; 
it  was  also  intended  to  increase  the  power  of  the  City  to  annoy 
these  enemies  in  future.  With  such  a  man  as  Beckford  as 
mayor,  and  with  such  men  as  Wilkes,  Sawbridge,  Towns- 
hend,  and  Crosby,  on  the  bench  of  aldermen — all  popular 
men  and  of  strong  liberal  opinions — what  might  the  corpo- 
ration not  do  ? 

The  same  part  which  was  being  acted  in  the  City  by  the 
Lord  Mayor  Beckford  and  his  colleagues,  was  acted,  within 
the  more  important  sphere  of  parliament,  by  the  Opposition 
in  both  houses.     The  parliament  of  that  session  had  been 
opened  on  the  9th  of  January,  and  it  was  to  be  prorogued  on 
the  19th  of  May.    The  case  of  Wilkes  had  been  before  it  from 
the  first  to  last,  so  that  it  had  discussed  little  else.     Uniting 
in  this  case,  and  making  it  the  ground  of  a  common  anta- 
gonism to  the  Court  and  the  ministry,  the  various  elements  of 
the  Opposition  had  constituted  themselves  into  a  powerful 
phalanx,  the  leaders  of  which,  in  the  one  house,  were  Lord 
Chatham,  the  Marquis  of  Bockingham,  the  Dukes  of  Bich- 
mond,  Portland,  and  Devonshire,  and  Lords  Shelburne  and 
Temple ;  and  in  the  other  house  Edmund  Burke,  Colonel 
Barre,  George  Grenville,  and  others.     It  was  Wilkes,  Wilkes, 
with  these  men  every  day  of  the  session ;  whenever,  in  short, 
they  wished  to  have  a  wrestling-match  with  the  ministers. 
Thus,  on  the  very  first  day  of  the  session,  Chatham  had  made 
a  motion  on  the  subject  in  the  House  of  Lords,  on  which  occa- 
sion, to  the  surprise  of  everybody,  the  Lord  Chancellor  Camden 
seceded  from  his  colleagues,  and  expressed  his  disapprobation 
of  their  policy.     He  was  forthwith  deprived  of  the  seals,  and 
the  Lord  Chancellorship  went  a-begging.     Then  followed,  as 
we  know,  the  resignation  of  the  premiership  by  the  Duke  of 
Grafton,  and  the  formation  of  a  second  edition  of  the  same 
cabinet  under  Lord  North.     It  was  in  this  unpopular  North 
administration  of  1770  that  young  Charles  Fox,  then   the 
greatest  rake  and  gambler  about  town,  first  took  office  as 
a  junior  lord  of  the  Admiralty;  and  the  earliest  parliamentary 
displays  of  this  future  chief  of  the  Whig  statesmen  were  in 
the  cause  of  that  very  policy  to  the  denunciation  and  destruc- 


252  CHATTERTON  : 

tion  of  whicli  he  afterwards  devoted  liis  remarkable  life. 
Many  were  the  gibes  against  this  young  orator  of  the  North 
party,  whose  abilities  were  already  recognised,  and  whose 
swarthy  complexion  and  premature  corpulence  (he  was  only 
twenty-one  when  the  wits  nicknamed  him  Niger  Fox  the  Fat), 
made  him  a  good  butt  for  personal  attacks ;  and  a  caricature 
of  the  day  is  still  extant  with  the  title  of  "  The  Death  of  the 
Foxes/'  in  which  Lord  Holland  as  the  old  fox,  and  his  son 
Charles  as  the  young  one,  are  represented  hanging  from  a 
gallows,  while  Farmer  Bull  and  his  wife  are  rejoicing  over 
their  emancipated  poultry.  Fox  was,  of  course,  no  friend  to 
Wilkes,  and,  in  the  lower  house,  it  devolved  on  him  to  resist 
the  motions  of  Burke  and  Barre  in  connexion  with  Wilkes's 
case.  It  was  in  the  House  of  Lords,  however,  that  the  agita- 
tion on  that  case  was  chiefly  kept  up.  Among  the  most  deci- 
sive measures  of  the  Opposition  was  a  renewed  motion  of 
Chatham's  in  that  house  on  the  1st  of  May — that  is,  some 
days  after  Wilkes^s  release  and  promotion  to  the  dignity  of 
alderman — "  to  repeal  and  rescind  the  resolutions  of  the 
House  of  Commons  in  regard  to  the  expulsion  and  incapacita- 
tion of  Mr.  Wilkes."  There  was  a  stormy  debate,  in  which 
the  principal  speakers  were,  on  the  one  side,  the  Duke  of 
Eichmond,  Lord  Chatham,  Lord  Lyttleton,  Lord  Camden, 
Lord  Shelburne,  and  Lord  Stanhope ;  and,  on  the  other,  the 
Duke  of  Grafton,  Lord  Denbigh,  Lord  Mansfield,  Lord 
Egmont,  Lord  Pomfret,  Lord  Weymouth,  and  Lord  Gower. 
The  motion  was  lost  by  a  majority  of  eighty-nine  against  forty- 
three  votes.  Judging  from  the  following  paragraph  in  the 
London  Evening  News  of  May  the  8th,  the  excitement  in  town, 
on  the  week  following  this  motion,  must  have  been  even 
greater  than  usual : — 

"  Tuesday,  May  8th. — Yesterday  a  great  number  of  people  assembled  in 
the  lobby  of  the  House  of  Commons  and  the  avenues  adjoining,  in  consequence 
of  a  report  which  had  been  spread  that  Mr.  Alderman  Wilkes  intended  to  go 
thither  that  day  to  claim  a  seat.  The  crowd  was  so  great  that  members  were 
hindered  from  passing  and  repassing ;  whereupon  the  gaUery  was  ordered  to 
be  locked  and  the  lobby  to  be  cleared.  But  Mr.  "Wilkes  did  not  go  to  the 
House." 

As  parliament  was  prorogued  on  the  19th  of  May,  there 
was  an  end,  for  that  season,  to  all  parliamentary  discussion  of 


A   STORY   OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  253 

the  case  of  Wilkes.  Members,  to  use  the  words  of  Junius, 
"retired  into  summer  quarters  to  rest  from  the  disgraceful 
labours  of  the  campaign  ;'^  (poor  members  of  parliament  now- 
a-days  have  to  drudge,  in  the  hot  weather,  for  three  months 
longer;)  and  Wilkes  had  to  be  content  with  sitting  on  the 
bench  as  an  alderman,  and  organizing,  along  with  Beckford, 
Sawbridge,  and  the  rest  of  the  City-folks,  a  new  deputation  to 
gall  the  King.  One  of  the  most  famous  incidents  of  the  day 
was  the  interview  of  this  deputation  with  the  King  on  the 
23d  of  May ;  an  interview  which  was  not  procured  without 
diflSculty.  The  deputation  having  been  introduced  into  the 
royal  presence,  the  Lord  Mayor,  Beckford,  read  a  "  humble 
remonstrance  "  to  his  Majesty — with  as  much  spice  in  it,  how- 
ever, as  the  form  of  such  documents  allowed — on  the  decisive 
terms  in  which  he  had  been  pleased  to  characterise  their 
address  and  petition  of  the  14th  of  March.  The  King  was 
implored  to  "  break  through  all  the  secret  and  visible  machi- 
nations to  which  the  City  of  London  had  owed  its  late  severe 
repulse,"  and  to  "  disclaim  the  malignant  and  pernicious 
advice"  which  had  induced  him  to  meet  the  former  deputation 
with  so  sharp  an  answer ;  *'  an  advice  of  most  dangerous  ten- 
dency, inasmuch  as  thereby  the  exercise  of  the  clearest  rights 
of  the  subject — namely,  to  petition  the  King  for  redress  of 
grievances,  to  complain  of  the  violation  of  the  freedom  of 
election,  to  pray  dissolution  of  parliament,  to  point  out  mal- 
practices in  administration,  and  to  urge  the  removal  of  evil 
ministers — hath,  by  the  generality  of  one  compendious  word, 
been  indiscriminately  checked  with  reprimand."  No  sooner 
had  the  King  heard  this  than,  facing  Beckford  in  a  way  to 
show  his  natural  obstinacy,  he  read  the  following  answer : — 

**  I  shotild  have  been  wanting  to  the  public,  as  well  as  to  myself,  if  I  had  not 
expressed  my  dissatisfaction  at  the  late  address.  My  sentiments  on  that  sub- 
ject continue  the  same ;  and  I  should  ill  deserve  to  be  considered  as  the  Father 
of  my  people,  if  I  should  suffer  myself  to  be  prevailed  upon  to  make  such  an 
use  of  my  prerogative  as  I  cannot  but  think  inconsistent  with  the  interest,  and 
dangerous  to  the  constitution  of  the  kingdom." 

Whereupon  Beckford,  excited  beyond  all  regard  for  the 
usual  formalities  of  royal  audiences,  burst  forth  in  an  extem- 
pore speech : — 


254  chatterton: 

"  Most  gracious  Sovereign,  will  your  Majesty  be  pleased  so  far  to  condescend 
as  to  permit  the  mayor  of  yoiir  loyal  City  of  London  to  declare  in  your  royal 
presence,  on  behalf  of  his  fellow-citizens,  how  much  the  bare  apprehension  of 
your  Majesty's  displeasure  would  at  all  times  affect  their  minds.  The  declara- 
tion of  that  displeasure  has  already  filled  them  with  inexpressible  anxiety,  and 
with  the  deepest  afiliction.  Permit  me,  sire,  to  assure  yo\ir  Majesty,  that  your 
Majesty  has  not,  in  all  your  dominions,  any  subjects  more  faithful,  more  duti- 
ful, or  more  affectionate  to  your  Majesty's  person  and  family,  or  more  ready  to 
sacrifice  their  lives  and  fortunes  in  the  maintenance  of  the  true  honour  and 
dignity  of  your  crown. 

"  We  do,  therefore,  with  the  greatest  humility  and  submission,  most  earnestly 
supplicate  yovir  Majesty  that  you  will  not  dismiss  us  from  yoiu-  presence  with- 
out expressing  a  more  favourable  opinion  of  your  faithfixl  citizens,  and  without 
some  comfort,  without  some  prospect  at  least  of  redress. 

"  Permit  me,  sire,  further  to  observe,  that  whoever  has  already  dared,  or  shall 
hereafter  endeavour,  by  false  insinuations  and  suggestions,  to  alienate  yovir 
Majesty's  affections  from  your  loyal  subjects  in  general,  and  from  the  City  of 
London  in  particular,  and  to  withdraw  your  confidence  in  and  regard  for  your 
people,  is  an  enemy  to  your  Majesty's  person  and  family,  a  violator  of  the 
public  peace,  and  a  betrayer  of  our  happy  constitution,  as  it  was  established  at 
the  glorious  Revolution." 

This  bold  harangue,  so  contrary  to  all  rules  of  etiquette, 
produced  a  kind  of  consternation  among  the  courtiers ;  the 
King,  who  had  been,  as  it  were,  trapped  into  hearing  it  by 
the  surprise  of  the  moment,  resented  it  as  an  insult ;  and  the 
deputation  retired  with  the  consciousness  that  the  breach 
between  the  City  of  London  and  the  King  had  been  made 
wider  than  ever.  Beckford,  however,  gained  great  credit  by 
his  conduct ;  the  speech  that  he  had  made  to  the  King  was 
in  everybody's  lips ;  and,  for  the  time,  he  rose  to  as  high  a 
station  of  popularity  as  Wilkes. 

While  the  case  of  Wilkes,  with  the  numerous  questions 
that  had  grown  out  of  it,  thus  formed  the  chief  matter  of 
controversy  in  the  politics  of  the  day,  there  was  another 
question  fraught,  as  the  issue  proved,  with  still  more  remark- 
able consequences,  which,  after  having  been  a  topic  of  occa- 
sional discussion  for  several  years,  began,  about  the  time  of 
Chatterton's  arrival  in  London,  to  assume  a  more  pressing 
and  public  aspect.  This  was  the  question  of  the  disaffection 
of  the  American  colonies. 

In  the  year  1764-5,  as  all  readers  of  American  history  know, 
the  parliament  of  Great  Britain  gave  the  first  deadly  shock  to 
the  allegiance  of  the  American  colonies  to  the  British  crown,  by 
decreeing  the  imposition  on  these  colonies  of  a  general  stamp 


A  STORY   OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  255 

tax,  for  the  purposes  of  revenue.  The  colonies,  severally  and 
conjointly,  had  protested  and  petitioned  against  this  act  of 
authority;  in  1767  the  stamp  tax  had  been  exchanged  for  a 
duty  on  paper,  glass,  painters'  colours,  and  teas.  This,  how- 
ever, had  not  satisfied  the  Americans,  and  from  year  to  year 
the  topic  had  been  brought  up  in  Parliament,  along  with  that 
of  Wilkes — the  politicians  and  writers  who  took  the  side  of 
Wilkes  generally  also  sympathising  with  the  resistance  of 
the  American  colonists  to  the  Home  Government ;  while  the 
Court  party,  on  the  other  hand,  who  opposed  Wilkes,  were 
also  eager  for  maintaining  the  prerogative  of  Britain  over  the 
colonies.  Things  had  come  to  such  a  pass  that  many  shrewd 
persons  foresaw  a  war  with  the  colonies,  and  prophesied  their 
separation  from  the  mother-country.  It  was  the  fear  of  this 
result  that  prompted  the  administration  of  Lord  North,  imme- 
diately after  its  accession,  in  the  beginning  of  1770,  to  repeal 
so  much  of  the  Act  of  1767  as  imposed  duties  on  glass, 
paper,  and  painters'  colours,  retaining  only  the  duty  on  tea. 
As,  by  such  an  arrangement,  the  obnoxious  jprmciple,  to 
which  the  Americans  were  repugnant,  was  still  maintained 
and  asserted,  there  was  little  doubt  that  it  would  prove  of 
no  avail.  But  before  news  could  arrive  of  the  manner  in 
which  the  Americans  had  received  it,  a  piece  of  intelligence 
crossed  the  Atlantic  which  increased  the  bitterness  of  the 
ministerial  feeling  against  the  intractable  folks  on  the  other 
side  of  the  water.  On  the  26th  of  April,  Chatterton's  first 
day  in  London,  there  appeared  in  the  London  evening  papers 
paragraphs  conveying  the  news  of  a  serious  riot  which  had 
occurred  in  the  streets  of  Boston  on  the  13th  of  March.  The 
riot  had  originated  in  a  quarrel  between  some  of  the  soldiers, 
who  had  been  quartered  in  the  town,  greatly  against  the 
wishes  of  the  inhabitants,  and  the  men  at  a  rope-manufactory, 
belonging  to  a  Mr.  Gray.  The  people  of  Boston,  highly 
incensed  against  the  military,  both  on  account  of  their  inso- 
lent behaviour,  and  because  they  had  been  sent  among  them 
to  enforce  the  odious  Tax  Act,  took  part  with  the  rope- 
makers.  There  was  a  violent  disturbance  of  the  peace ;  the 
troops   fired   on   the  people,  and  some  unoffending  persons 


256  CHATTERTON  I 

were  killed :  the  whole  town  rose,  and,  to  prevent  still  worse 
results,  the  military  commander  had  to  withdraw  the  soldiers 
to  some  distance.  "  Had  they  not  been  withdrawn,"  said  a 
private  letter  from  Boston,  which  appeared  in  the  London 
Morning  Post,  ''  the  Bostonians  would  have  set  fire  to  their 
beacon,  a  tar-barrel  stuck  on  the  top  of  a  mast  on  a  high 
hill,  and  raised  the  country  for  eighty  miles  round." 

Such  was  the  news  which  the  American  post  brought  to 
London  on  the  day  when  Chatterton  began  his  residence  in 
Shoreditch.  For  a  week,  or  more,  the  town  was  full  of  it; 
the  Wilkes  party  rejoicing  over  it  as  a  new  embarrassment  to 
ministers,  and  the  ministers  themselves  not  knowing  very 
well  what  to  say  or  think  about  it.  From  that  time  a  war 
with  the  colonies  seemed  a  probable  event. 

In  addition  to  the  protracted  Wilkes  controversy,  and  to 
this  matter  of  the  Boston  riot,  and  its  connexion  with  colonial 
policy,  there  were,  of  course,  a  variety  of  minor  incidents  of 
more  or  less  interest,  affording  materials  for  gossip  to  the 
town  during  the  first  five  or  six  weeks  of  Chatterton^s 
sojourn  in  it.  At  that  time,  as  in  this,  there  were  balls, 
horse-races,  theatrical  performances,  murders,  robberies,  mar- 
riages in  high  life,  fires,  &c.  &c.,  all  duly  announced  in  the 
public  papers,  and  all  excellent  as  pabulum  for  the  conver- 
sation of  the  idle  and  the  curious.  By  way  of  sample,  and 
that  our  readers  may  the  more  easily  fill  out  the  picture  for 
themselves,  we  shall  string  together  a  few  of  those  defunct 
minutiae,  as  we  gather  them  quite  miscellaneously  from  the 
columns  of  the  contemporary  newspapers  : — 

Wednesday,  April  25  (day  of  Chatterton' s  arrival  in  London). — "  Eanelagh 
House  will  be  opened  this  evening  vt^ith  the  usual  entertainments.  Admittance, 
2s.  6d.  each  person ;  coffee  and  tea  included.  The  house  will  continue  to  be 
open  on  Mondays,  Wednesdays,  and  Fridays  tUl  farther  notice.  N.B. — There 
will  be  an  armed  guard  on  horseback  to  patrol  the  roads." — Adxertiseme^it  in 
Public  Advertiser  of  that  day. 

Same  evening. — At  Drury-lane,  the  following  performances  : — The  Clandestine 
Marriage.  Lord  Ogleby,  by  Mr.  Dibdin ;  Miss  Sterling,  by  Miss  Pope,  After 
which,  The  Padlock,  a  musical  piece.     Benefit  of  Mr.  Dibdin. 

Same  day. — A  levee  at  St.  James's. 

Thursday,  April  26  (Chatterton's  first  day  in  London,  and  day  of  the  arrival 
of  the  news  of  the  Boston  riot).— A  masquerade  at  the  Op.era  House,  given  by 
the  club  at  Arthur's ;  present  more  than  1,200  nobility,  ambassadors,  &c. 

Same  day. — A  bill  of  indictment  found  at  Hick's  Hall  against  the  author  or 


A   STOKY  OF  THE  YEAR   1770.  257 

editor  of  the  Whisperer,  one  of  the  fiercest  of  the  anti-ministerial  periodicals. 
Warrant  for  his  apprehension  issued  on  the  28th. 

Same  evening. — At  Drury-lane,  The  Beggar's  Opera,  with  The  Minor.  Mr. 
Bannister's  benefit. 

Monday,  April  30  (fifth  day  of  Chatterton  in  London). — At  Co  vent-garden, 
Addison's  tragedy  of  Cato  revived,  with  The  Rape  of  Proserpine. 

Wednesday,  May  2  (Chatterton  a  week  in  liondon).—  At  Drury-lane,  Hamlet 
— the  part  of  Hamlet  by  Garrick ;  after  which,  Queen  Mab.  Benefit  night  of 
Signor  Grimaldi,  Mr.  Messenk,  and  Signor  Giorgi. 

Monday,  May  7  (the  day  on  which,  as  above  stated,  a  crowd  gathered  at  the 
door  of  the  House  of  Commons  on  the  false  idea  that  Wilkes  was  to  go  to  the 
House,  and  claim  his  seat). —  "Rumour  that  a  lady  of  high  quality  would  appear 
that  evening  at  the  Soho  Masquerade  in  the  character  of  an  Indian  princess, 
most  superbly  dressed,  and  with  pearls  and  diamonds  to  the  price  of  100,000^. ; 
her  train  to  be  supported  by  three  black  young  female  slaves,  and  a  canopy  to 
be  held  over  her  head  by  two  black  male  slaves.     To  be  a  fine  sight." 

Wednesday,  May  16. — "  Thirteen  convicts  executed  together  at  Tyburn,  con- 
veyed in  five  carts ;  mostly  boys,  the  eldest  not  being  more  than  twenty-two 
years  of  age.  Some  of  them  were  greatly  affected,  others  appeared  hardened." 

SatMrday,  May  19. — Parliament  prorogued,  as  stated  above, 

Wednesday,  May  23. — The  famous  interview  of  the  City  deputation  with  the 
King,  at  which  Beckford  made  the  speech  quoted  above. 

Saturday,  May  26. — Drury-lane  Theatre  closed  for  the  season. 

Monday,  May  28. — Covent-garden  Theatre  closed  for  the  season. 

Same  day. — "  At  two  o'clock,  a.  m.,  a  fire  at  the  house  of  Messrs.  Webb  and 
Fry,  paper-stainers,  Holbom-hill,  near  the  end  of  Shoe-lane;  four  persons 
burnt  to  death." 

Same  day  2%. — One  of  "Junius's"  letters  in  the  Public  Advertiser,  con- 
taining a  view  of  the  state  of  the  country,  and  a  cutting  criticism  of  the 
conduct  of  ministers  during  the  session  just  closed.  Only  two  acknowledged 
letters  of  "  Junius  "  appeared  during  the  period  of  Chatterton's  residence  in 
London,  and  this  was  one  of  them. 

Wednesday,  May  30. — "  News  arrived  that  a  French  East  Indian  ship  had 
reached  Toulon,  bringing  word  of  a  dreadful  earthquake  at  St.  Helena,  which 
had  entirely  sunk  the  island  in  the  sea." — Gentleman's  Magazine. 

Thursday,  May  31. — Foundation-stone  of  Newgate  prison  laid  by  the  Lord 
Mayor  Beckford. 

All  April  and  May. — Advertisements  of  goods,  sales,  quack  medicines,  and 
new  books  in  the  newspapers;  also  paragraphs  innumerable  on  the  case  of 
Matthew  and  Patrick  Kennedy,  two  brothers,  tried  and  condemned  to  death 
for  the  murder  of  John  Bigby,  a  watchman,  but  who  had  obtained  a  free 
pardon  through  the  influence  of  their  sister.  Miss  Kennedy,  a  celebrated 
woman  of  the  town,  on  intimate  relations  with  several  high  men  at  Court.  An 
appeal  was  laid  against  this  settlement  of  the  matter,  and  a  new  trial  appointed, 
much  to  the  gratification  of  the  anti-Court  party ;  but  Bigby's  widow  having 
got  38 OZ.  to  keep  out  of  the  way,  the  trial  fell  to  the  ground,  and  the  brothers 
escaped. 

It  was  into  the  midst  of  such  incidents  as  these,  episodic 
as  they  were  to  the  two  great  topics  of  Wilkes  and  the  Con- 
stitution and  the  growing  disaffection  of  the  American  colo- 
nies, that  Chatterton  transferred  himself  by  his  removal  from 
Bristol  to  London.  With  some  of  the  little  incidents  men- 
tioned he  may  even  have  come  into  direct  personal  contact. 
If  he  did  not  go  to  see  Addison's  tragedy  of  Cato  at  Covent- 
garden  on  the  30th  of  April,  it  is  not  likely  that  he  missed 


258  CHATTERTON  : 

the  opportunity  of  seeing  Garrick  in  Hamlet  at  Dniiy-lane, 
on  the  2d  of  May.  If  the  "fine  sight"  of  the  lady  of  high 
quality  with  the  hundred  thousand  pounds*  worth  of  jewels 
about  her,  and  the  three  young  negi'esses  supporting  her  train, 
did  not  tempt  him  to  the  vicinity  of  the  Soho  Masquerade  on 
the  evening  of  the  7th  of  May,  it  is  not  at  all  improbable 
that  he  formed  one  of  the  crowd  that  gathered  round  the  door 
of  the  House  of  Commons  that  evening  on  the  false  expecta- 
tion of  seeing  Wilkes  come  to  make  a  row,  and  get  himself 
committed  to  custody  by  the  Speaker.  Even  at  the  distance  of 
Shoreditch  the  rumour  of  the  thirteen  boys  hanged  at  Tyburn 
on  the  morning  of  the  16th  of  May  must  have  reached  him  ;  for, 
common  as  hangings  were  then,  such  an  occurence  was  suffi- 
ciently unusual  to  make  some  commotion  through  all  London. 
The  prorogation  of  Parliament  on  the  19th  of  the  same  month 
would  be  a  matter  to  interest  him  ;  much  more  the  royal 
audience  given  to  the  City  deputation  on  the  23d,  and  Beck- 
ford's  famous  speech.  Shoe  Lane  being  one  of  his  haunts, 
the  charred  ruins  of  the  premises  of  Messrs.  Webb  and  Fry 
may  very  possibly  have  attracted  his  notice  on  the  28th  or 
29th  of  May  as  he  passed  along  Holbom ;  and,  a  daily  fre- 
quenter as  he  was  of  the  cofiee-houses  where  the  newspapers 
were  to  be  seen,  he  is  sure  to  have  been  one  of  the  earliest 
and  most  eager  readers  of  the  Public  Advertiser  containing 
Junius's  powerful  letter  of  May  the  28th. 

Nor  is  all  this  mere  conjecture.  Not  only  do  we  know  it 
as  a  fact  that  it  was  part  of  Chatterton's  ambition  in  coming 
to  London  to  work  himself  into  connexion  with  the  prominent 
men  and  interests  of  the  day,  and,  above  all,  with  the  notable 
personages  of  the  Wilkes  party ;  we  also  know  it  as  a  fact 
that,  to  some  small  extent  at  least,  he  succeeded  in  doing  so/ 
The  evidence  of  this  we  shall  produce  in  the  next  chapter, 

CHAPTER  iir. 

SETTING  THE  THAMES  ON   FIRE, 

Chatterton^S  London  life,  as  some  of  our  readers  must  be 
aware,  forms  the  subject  of  a  brief  romance  from  the  pen  of 


^ 


A   STORY   OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  259 

Alfred  de  Vigny.  In  that  writer's  pleasing  volume  of  fiction, 
entitled  "  Stello,"  Chatterton  is  introduced  as  the  real  hero  in 
the  story  of  the  so-called  Kitty  Bell.  Kitty  Bell  is  a  young 
married  woman,  who  keeps  a  pastrycook's  shop  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  the  Houses  of  Parliament.  Her  cakes  and  con- 
fections are  celebrated  far  and  wide ;  and  partly  from  this  cause, 
partly  from  Kitty's  own  attractiveness,  her  shop  has  become  a 
habitual  lounge  of  the  legislators  of  the  country  as  they  pass 
to  and  from  their  duties  in  St.  Stephen's.  Kitty,  however, 
is  as  virtuous  as  she  is  pretty ;  and  though  her  husband  is  a 
sulky  brute,  and  the  young  lords  and  members  of  Parliament 
are  very  assiduous  in  buying  cakes  from  her  fair  fingers, 
nothing  amiss  can  be  said  of  her.  There  is  one  figure,  indeed, 
occasionally  seen  hovering  about  the  shop,  the  apparition  of 
which  invariably  discomposes  her,  especially  when  her  husband 
is  near.  This  turns  out  to  be  Chatterton,  who,  having  come 
to  London  to  push  his  fortune,  has,  in  order  to  be  near  the 
Houses  of  Parliament,  taken  a  lodging  in  Kitty  Bell's  house. 
Kitty,  with  her  womanly  heart,  has  contrived  to  dive  into  her 
mysterious  lodger's  secret,  and  to  ascertain  that  he  is  a  young 
man  of  genius  engaged  in  the  hopeless  task  of  establishing  a 
connexion  with  the  public  men  of  the  day  by  means  of  literary 
service,  and,  in  the  meantime,  without  a  penny  in  his  pocket. 
She  does  all,  in  the  circumstances,  that  fear  of  her  brute  of  a 
husband  will  permit.  She  supplies  her  lodger  furtively  with 
tarts;  screens  from  her  husband  the  fact  that  he  is  unable 
to  pay  for  the  garret  he  occupies ;  and,  in  short,  through 
pity  and  interest,  falls  at  last  most  foolishly  in  love  with  him. 
Sustained  by  her  kindness  and  encouragement,  Chatterton 
perseveres  in  his  enterprise,  gets  acquainted  with  the  Lord 
Mayor  Beckford,  and  is  led  to  conceive  great  hopes  from  the 
promise  of  his  patronage.  Beckford  accordingly  calls  one  day 
at  the  shop,  and,  by  way  of  fulfilling  his  promise,  ofifers  to 
make  Chatterton  his — footman  !  Then  comes  the  catastrophe  ; 
Chatterton,  in  despair,  commits  suicide,  and  poor  Kitty  Bell  is 
left  to  serve  out  cakes  and  comfits  with  a  heart  no  more. 

A  very  pretty  story  this,  with,  unfortunately,  but  one  ob- 
jection to  it — that  it  is  not  true  !  The  true  story  of  Chatterton's 

S2 


260  CHATTERTON : 

London  life,  one  would  suppose,  is  to  be  preferred  to  the  false 
one  ;  and  as  the  materials  for  the  true  story  were  before  Alfred 
de  Yignj  in  Chatterton's  own  letters,  it  is  a  pity  that  he  was 
so  fond  of  fiction  as  not  to  pay  attention  to  them.  Instead 
of  going  to  lodge  at  Kitty  BelPs,  or  at  any  other  conceivable 
pastrycook's  in  Westminster,  Chatterton,  as  our  readers  know, 
went  to  lodge  at  a  plasterer's  in  Shoreditch ;  and  if  Providence 
was  really  so  kind  to  him  as  to  supply  him  with  a  fair  consoler 
living  under  the  same  roof,  this,  as  our  readers  also  know,  can 
possibly,  in  the  first  stage  of  his  London  career,  have  been  no 
other  than  the  motherly  Mrs.  Ballance,  or,  at  best,  that  hussy, 
the  landlady's  niece,  to  whom  he  "  used  sometimes  to  be  saucy." 
And  so  with  the  rest  of  the  facts.  The  real  progress  of  Chat- 
terton, in  his  endeavours  to  make  himself  known — the  real 
extent  of  his  success  in  working  himself  from  his  centre  in 
Shoreditch  into  connexion  with  the  metropolitan  men  and 
interests  of  the  day,  as  summarily  described  in  the  last  chapter 
— are  to  be  gathered,  so  far  as  they  can  be  gathered  at  all, 
from  his  own  letters. 

Chatterton's  second  letter  to  his  mother  was  written  on  the 
6th  of  May,  or  after  Chatterton  had  been  exactly  ten  days  in 
London.     It  is  as  follows  : — 

"  Shoreditcli,  London,  May  6,  1770. 
"  Dear  Mother, — I  am  surprised  that  no  letter  has  been  sent  in  answer  to 
my  last.  I  am  settled,  and  in  such  a  settlement  as  I  would  desire.  I  get  four 
guineas  a  month  by  one  magazine  ;  shall  engage  to  write  a  History  of  England 
and  other  pieces,  which  wUl  more  than  double  that  sum.  Occasional  essays  for 
the  daily  papers  would  more  than  support  me.  What  a  glorious  prospect! 
Mr.  Wilkes  tiiew  me  by  my  \\Titings  since  I  first  corresponded  with  the  book- 
sellers here.  I  shall  visit  him  next  week,  and  by  his  interest  will  ensure  Mrs. 
Ballance  the  Trinity  House.  He  affirmed  that  what  Mr.  Fell  had  of  mine  could 
not  be  the  writings  of  a  youth,  and  expressed  a  desire  to  know  the  author.  By 
the  means  of  another  bookseller,  I  shall  be  introduced  to  Townshend  and 
Sawbridge.  I  am  quite  familiar  at  the  Chapter  CoflFee-house,  and  know  all  the 
genivises  there.  A  character  is  now  unnecessary;  an  author  carries  his  cha- 
racter in  his  pen.  My  sister  will  improve  herself  in  drawing.  My  gi-andmother 
is,  I  hope,  well.  Bristol's  mercenary  walls  were  never  destined  to  hold  me ; 
there,^  I  was  out  of  my  element;  now,  I  am  in  it.  London ! — good  God  1  how 
superior  is  London  to  that  despicable  place  Bristol !  Here  is  none  of  your  little 
meannesses,  none  of  your  mercenary  securities,  which  disgrace  that  miserable 
hamlet.  Dress,  which  is  in  Bristol  an  eternal  fund  of  scandal,  is  here  only  in- 
troduced as  a  subject  of  praise ;  if  a  man  dresses  well,  he  has  taste;  if  careless, 
he  has  his  own  reasons  for  so  doing,  and  is  prudent.  N^eed  I  remind  you  of  the 
contrast?  The  poverty  of  authors  is  a  common  observation,  but  not  always 
a  true  one._  No  author  can  be  poor  who  understands  the  arts  of  booksellers  ; 
without  this  necessary  knowledge  the  greatest  genius  may  starve,  and  with  it 
the  greatest  dunce  live  in  splendour.  This  knowledge  I  have  pretty  well  dipped 


A  STORY   OF   THE   YEAR   1770.  261 

into. — The  Levant  man-of-war,  in  which  T.  Wensley  went  out,  is  at  Portsmouth  ; 
but  no  news  of  him  yet.  I  lodge  in  one  of  Mr.  Walmsley's  best  rooms.  Let 
Mr.  Gary  copy  the  letters  on  the  other  side,  and  give  them  to  the  persons  for 
whom  they  are  designed,  if  not  too  much  labour  for  him. 

**  I  remain,  yours,  &c. 

"  T.  Chatterton. 
"  P.S.— I  have  some  trifling  presents  for  my  mother,  sister,  Thome,  &c." 

[Here  follow  the  letters  to  various  Bristol  acquaintances, 
which  Mr.  Carj  was  to  copy  out  and  give  them]  : — 

*'  Mr.  T.Cary.—l  have  sent  you  a  task — I  hope  no  unpleasing  one.  Tell  all 
your  acquaintances  for  the  future  to  read  the  Freeholders  Magazine.  When  you 
have  anything  for  publication,  send  it  to  me,  and  it  shall  most  certainly  appear 
in  some  periodical  compilation.  Your  last  piece  was,  by  the  ignorance  of  a  cor- 
rector, jumbled  under  the  '  considerations '  in  the  acknowledgments,  but  I 
rescued  it,  and  insisted  on  its  appearance.     Your  friend 

"  T.  C. 

"  Direct  for  me,  to  be  left  at  the  Chapter  Coffee-house,  Paternoster-row." 

"  Mr.  Henry  Kator. — If  you  have  not  forgot  Lady  Betty,  any  complaint, 
rebus,  or  enigma,  on  the  dear  charmer,  directed  for  me,  to  be  left  at  the 
Chapter  Coffee-house,  Paternoster-row,  shall  find  a  place  in  some  magazine  or 
other,  as  I  am  engaged  in  many.     Your  friend, 

"  T.  Chatterton." 
"  Mr.  Wm.  Smith. — When  you  have  any  poetry  for  publication,  send  it  to  me, 
to  be  left  at  the  Chapter  Coffee-house,  Paternoster-row,  and  it   shall   most 
certainly  appear.     Your  friend, 

"  T.  C." 

"  Mrs.  Baker. — The  sooner  I  see  you  the  better.  Send  me,  as  soon  as 
possible,  Rymsdyk's  address."  (Mr.  Cary  will  leave  this  at  Mr.  Flower's, 
Small-street.) 

"  Mr.  Mason. — Give  me  a  short  prose  description  of  the  situation  of  Nash  ; 
and  the  poetic  addition  shall  appear  in  some  magazine.  Send  me  also  whatever 
you  would  have  published,  and  direct  for  me,  to  be  left  at  the  Chapter  Coffee- 
house, Paternoster-row.     Yovu-  friend, 

"  T.  Chatterton." 

"  Mr.  Mattheio  Mease. — Begging  Mr.  Mease's  pardon  for  making  public  use  of 
his  name  lately,  I  hope  he  will  remember  me,  and  tell  all  his  acquaintance  to 
read  the  Freeholder's  Magazine  for  the  future. 

"  T.  Chatterton." 

"  Tell  Mr.  Thaire,  Mr.  Gaster,  Mr.  A.  Broughton,  Mr.  J.  Broughton,  Mr. 
Williams,  Mr.  Rudhall,  Mr.  Thomas,  Mr.  Carty,  Mr.  Hanmor,  Mr.  Vaughan, 
Mr.  Ward,  Mr.  Kalo,  Mr.  Smith,  &c.  &c.,  to  read  the  Freeholder's  Magazine." 

This  is  certainly  pretty  well  after  only  ten  days  in  London. 
We  fear,  indeed,  that  there  is  a  good  deal  of  bragging  in  the 
letter,  intended  to  convey  to  his  Bristol  acquaintances  a  more 
favourable  impression  of  the  progress  he  had  already  made  in 
the  great  metropolis  than  the  facts,  as  known  to  himself, 
exactly  warranted.  Still,  it  is  evident  that  Chatterton,  when 
he  wrote  the  letter,  was  in  high  spirits.  Keducing  the  expres- 
sions of  the  letter  to  the  real  substance  of  fact,  on  which,  as  it 


262  CHATTERTON  : 

seems  to  us,  tliey  may  liave  been  founded,  we  should  be 
inclined  to  say  that  the  information  here  given  respecting  the 
extent  of  Chatterton's  success  in  introducing  himself  to  notice 
during  his  first  ten  days  in  London,  amounts  to  something- 
like  this : — Being  a  young  fellow  of  prepossessing  appear- 
ance and  address,  and  having,  as  we  know,  a  sufficiently  good 
opinion  of  himself  to  prevent  any  of  that  awkwardness  in 
meeting  strangers  which  arises  from  excessive  modesty,  he  had 
made  the  best  use  he  could  of  the  slight  hold  he  had  on  Fell, 
Hamilton,  Edmunds,  and  Dodsley ;  had  gone  to  their  places 
of  business  perhaps  oftener  than  they  cared  to  see  him ;  had 
talked  with  them,  made  proposals  of  literary  assistance  to 
them,  compelled  them  into  saying  something  that  could  be 
construed  as  encouragement ;  had  got  from  them  hints  as  to 
other  quarters  in  which  he  could  apply ;  had  probably,  by 
their  advice,  turned  his  hopes  towards  the  great  book-mart  of 
Paternoster  Row,  where  all  sorts  of  speculations  he  might  help 
in  were  going  on ;  and  had  thus  at  last  found  himself  referred 
to  that  celebrated  place  of  resort  for  the  booksellers  of  the  day 
and  their  literary  workmen,  the  Chapter  Coffee-house.  Mr. 
Peter  Cunningham,  in  his  Handbook  of  London^  has  provided 
us  with  an  extract  relative  to  this  once  famous  rendezvous, 
which  will  serve  to  give  us  a  more  distinct  idea  of  it  as  it  was 
in  Chatterton's  time ;  and,  the  house  being  still  extant,  those 
who  desire  to  perfect  this  idea  by  acquaintance  with  it  in  its 
present  condition,  may  do  so  at  the  expense  of  a  mutton-chop 
any  afternoon  they  are  in  the  neighbourhood  of  St.  Paul's. 

"  And  here  my  publisher  would  not  forgive  me,  was  I  to  leave  the  neighbour- 
hood without  taking  notice  of  the  Chapter  Coffee-house,  which  is  frequented 
by  those  encouragers  of  literature  and  (as  they  are  styled  by  an  eminent  critic) 
'  not  the  worst  judges  of  meric,'  the  booksellers.  The  conversation  here 
naturally  tiims  upon  the  newest  publications ;  but  their  criticisms  are  some- 
what singxilar.  When  they  say  a  good  book,  they  do  not  mean  to  praise  the 
style  or  sentiment,  but  the  quick  and  extensive  sale  of  it.  That  book  is  best 
which  sells  most;  and  if  the  demand  for  Quarles  should  be  greater  than  for 
Pope,  he  would  have  the  highest  place  on  the  rubric-post." — Tke  Connoisseur, 
No.  1,  Jan.  31st,  1754. 

Here,  then,  among  the  talking  groups  of  booksellers,  we 
are  to  fancy  Chatterton  a  daily  visitor  during  the  first  week 
or  two  of  his  stay  in  town — reading  the  newspapers,  listening 
to  the  conversation,  getting  acquainted  with  ''  the  geniuses  " 


A   STORY   OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  263 

of  the  place,  and  giving  very  small  orders  to  the  waiters.  The 
Chapter  Coffee-house  was  evidently  a  great  place  in  his  eyes, 
and  every  shilling  spent  in  it  he  probably  regarded  as  a  good 
investment.  All  his  Bristol  friends  were  to  address  their 
letters  to  him  there,  and  not  to  his  lodging  at  Shoreditch. 

More  particularly,  however.  Chatter  ton's  hopes  at  the  period 
of  his  first  settlement  in  London,  seem  to  have  rested  on  the 
intimacy  he  had  struck  up  with  Mr.  Fell.  We  have  already 
communicated  to  the  reader  our  impression  of  this  personage, 
as  a  gentleman  in  pecuniary  difficulties,  connected  in  some 
way  with  Wilkes,  and  employing  his  own  broken  energies,  and 
the  capital  of  other  people,  in  the  publication  of  the  Free- 
holder s  Magazine.  His  reception  of  Chatterton,  we  have 
said,  seems  to  have  been,  and  probably  from  the  state  of  his 
own  circumstances,  more  frank  and  cordial  than  that  of  any 
other  of  the  booksellers  Chatterton  called  upon.  A  kind  of 
mutual  understanding  seems,  indeed,  to  have  been  at  once 
established  between  them.  On  the  one  hand,  as  we  guess, 
Chatterton  was  to  have  the  pages  of  the  Freeholders  Magazine 
thrown  open  to  him ;  on  the  other  hand.  Fell,  to  whom  the 
service  of  a  clever  contributor  on  any  other  terms  than  those 
of  hard  cash,  was  probably  a  great  convenience,  was  willing 
to  remunerate  his  young  friend  with  plenty  of  promises,  and 
in  the  meantime  with  the  benefits  of  his  advice  and  counte- 
nance, and  as  much  praise  as  he  liked.  The  prospect  of  being 
introduced  to  Wilkes  was,  it  would  appear,  the  most  attractive 
bait  that  could  be  held  out  to  Chatterton ;  and  we  greatly 
fear  Fell  made  the  most  of  the  fact.  "  I  assure  you,  Mr. 
Chatterton,  Mr.  Wilkes  has  a  high  opinion  of  you ;  he  has 
more  than  once  asked  me  about  writings  of  yours  j  and  when 
I  told  him  that  you  were  not  eighteen,  '  Upon  my  soul  I 
don't  believe  it,  Mr.  Fell,'  said  he ;  'so  young  a  man  could 
not  write  like  that :'  these  were  his  very  words."  Such,  as 
we  infer  from  Chatterton' s  own  account,  was  the  substance  of 
much  of  his  conversation  with  Fell.  How  much  of  sincerity 
there  was  in  the  farther  promise  on  the  part  of  Fell,  that  he 
would  introduce  Chatterton  to  Wilkes,  we  can  hardly  say. 
There  is,  certainly,  some  bragging  in  the  manner  in  which 


264  CHATTERTON  : 

Chatterton  announces  the  promised  introduction  to  his  mother  ^ 
"I  shall  visit  him  (Wilkes)  next  week,  and,  by  his  interest, 
will  ensure  Mrs.  Ballance  the  Trinity  House ;  ^'  (^.  e.  the 
charitable  allowance  granted  out  of  the  funds  of  this  founda- 
tion to  the  widows  of  deserving  seamen.)  Chatterton,  we 
fully  believe,  had  shrewdness  enough,  with  all  his  inex- 
perience and  his  good  opinion  of  himself,  to  know  that  he  was 
putting  a  little  strain  on  the  truth  here.  And  so  also,  pro- 
bably, in  the  matter  of  the  other  proposed  introduction  to  the 
two  popular  aldermen,  Townshend  and  Sawbridge.  Still,  it 
is  evident  that  he  had  some  trust  in  Fell.  To  read  the  Free- 
holder s  Magazine,  and  to  address  his  letters  to  the  Chapter 
Coffee-house,  in  Paternoster  Row,  were  his  two  injunctions  to 
his  friends  at  home  after  he  had  been  ten  days  in  London. 

What  came  of  the  connexion  so  rapidly  formed  with  Fell 
and  the  Freeholder  s  Magazine,  will  be  seen  from  Chatterton's 
next  letter.     It  is  to  his  mother : — • 

"  King's  Bench,  for  the  present,  May  14,  1770. 
"  Dear  Madam, — Don't  be  surprised  at  the  name  of  the  place.  I  am  not 
here  as  a  prisoner.  Matters  go  on  swimmingly.  Mr,  Fell  having  oflfended  cer- 
tain persons,  they  have  set  his  creditors  upon  him,  and  he  is  safe  in  the  King's 
Bench.  I  have  been  bettered  by  this  accident :  his  successors  in  the  Freeholder's 
Magazine,  knowing  nothing  of  the  matter,  will  be  glad  to  engage  me  on  my 
own  terms.  Mi\  Edmunds  has  been  tried  before  the  House  of  Lords,  sen- 
tenced to  pay  a  fine,  and  thrown  into  Newgate.  His  misfortunes  wiU  be  to  me 
of  no  little  service.  Last  week,  being  in  the  pit  of  Drury  Lane  theatre  [it 
might  have  been  to  see  Garrick  again],  I  contracted  an  immediate  acquaintance 
(which  you  know  is  no  hard  task  to  me)  with  a  young  gentleman  in  Cheapside, 
partner  in  a  music-shop,  the  greatest  in  the  city.  Hearing  I  could  write,  he 
desired  me  to  write  a  few  songs  for  him ;  this  I  did  the  same  night,  and  con- 
veyed them  to  him  the  next  morning.  These  he  showed  to  a  Doctor  in  music, 
and  I  am  invited  to  treat  with  the  Doctor,  on  the  footing  of  a  composer  for 
Ranelagh  and  the  Gardens.  'Bravo,  hey  hoys,  up  we  go!'  Besides  the  ad- 
vantage of  visiting  these  expensive  and  polite  places  gratis,  my  vanity  will  be 
fed  with  the  sight  of  my  name  in  copper-plate,  and  my  sister  wiU  receive  a 
bundle  of  printed  songs,  the  words  by  her  brother.  These  are  not  all  my 
acquisitions.  A  gentleman  who  knows  me  at  the  '  Chapter,'  as  an  author, 
would  have  introduced  me  as  a  companion  to  the  young  Duke  of  Northumber- 
land, in  his  intended  general  tour.  But  alas  !  1  speak  no  tongue  but  my  own. 
— But  to  return  once  more  to  a  place  I  am  sickened  to  write  of,  Bristol.  [Here 
follows  some  references  to  Mr.  Lambert,  and  a '  clearance '  from  the  apprenticeship 
to  be  obtained  from  him.]  I  will  get  some  patterns  worth  your  acceptance,  and 
wish  you  and  my  sister  would  improve  yourselves  in  drawing,  as  it  is  here  a 
valuable  and  never-failing  acquisition.  My  box  shall  be  attended  to ;  I  hope 
my  books  are  in  it.  If  not,  send  them,  and  particularly  Catcott's  Ilutchin- 
Bonian  jargon  on  the  Deluge,  and  the  MS.  glossary,  composed  of  one  small 
book  annexed  to  a  larger.  My  sister  will  remember  me  to  Miss  Sandford. 
I  have  not  quite  forgot  her ;  though  there  are  so  many  pretty  milliners,  &c. 


A   STORY   OF   THE   YEAR   1770.  265 

hat  I  have  almost  forgot  myself.  [There  are  similar  remembrances,  and  mes- 
sages to  Mr.  Gary ;  to  Miss  Rumsey,  who  seems  to  be  intending  a  journey  to 
London,  and  is  requested  to  send  Chatterton  her  address,  if  she  does  come,  as 
*  London  is  not  Bristol,'  and  they  *  may  patrol  the  town  for  a  day  without 
raising  one  whisper  or  nod  of  scandal  ;*  to  Miss  Baker,  Miss  Porter,  Miss  Singer, 
Miss  Webb,  and  Miss  Thatcher,  who  is  assured  that  'if  he  is  not  in  love  with 
her,  he  is  in  love  with  nobody  else ;'  to  Miss  Love,  on  whose  name  he  is  going 
to  write  a  song ;  to  Miss  Cotton,  *  begging  her  pardon  for  whatever  has  hap- 
pened to  offend  her,  and  telling  her  he  did  not  give  her  this  assurance  when  in 
Bristol  lest  it  should  seem  like  an  attempt  to  avoid  the  anger  of  her  furi- 
ous brother ; '  finally  to  Miss  Watkins,  assuring  her  *  that  the  letter  she  has 
made  herself  ridiculous  by  was  never  intended  for  her,  but  for  another  young 
lady  in  the  same  neighbourhood,  of  the  same  name.'  Chatterton  also  asks  his 
sister  to  send  him  '  a  jom-nal  of  all  the  transactions  of  the  females  within  the 
circle  of  their  acquaintance.']  I  promised,  before  my  departure,  to  write  to 
some  hundreds,  I  beUeve ;  but  what  with  writing  for  publications  and  going 
to  places  of  public  diversion,  which  is  as  absolutely  necessary  to  me  as  food, 
I  find  but  little  time  to  write  to  you.  As  to  Mr.  Barrett,  Mr.  Catcott,  Mr. 
Burgum,  &c.  &c.,  they  rate  literary  lumber  so  low,  that  I  believe  an  author,  in 
their  estimation,  must  be  poor  indeed.  But  here  matters  are  otherwise ;  had 
Rowley  been  a  Londoner,  instead  of  a  Bristowyan,  I  could  have  lived  by  copy- 
ing his  works.  .  .  .  My  youthful  acquaintances  wUl  not  take  in  dudgeon,  that  I  do 
not  write  oftener  to  them ;  bu.t  as  I  had  the  happy  art  of  pleasing  in  conversa- 
tion, my  company  was  often  liked  where  I  did  not  like ;  and  to  continue  a  cor- 
respondence under  such  circumstances  woiild  be  ridiculous.  Let  my  sister 
improve  in  copying  music,  drawing,  and  everything  which  requires  genius  :  in 
Bristol's  mercantile  style  those  things  may  be  useless,  if  not  a  detriment  to  her ; 
but  here  they  are  highly  profitable,  [A  few  additional  messages  to  Bristol 
friends  follow,  together  with  a  hope  that  his  grandmother  'enjoys  the  state 
of  health  he  left  her  in,'  and  an  intimation,  apparently  in  connexion  with  Mrs. 
Ballance's  business,  that  he  had  '  intended  waiting  on  the  Duke  of  Bedford 
relative  to  the  Trinity  House ;  but  his  Grace  is  dangerously  HI.'] 

"  Monday  evening.  "  Thomas  Chatterton. 

"  Direct  to  me  at  Mr.  Walmsley's,  at  Shoreditch — only." 

To  this  letter  succeeds  one  written  to  liis  sister,  dated  May 
the  30th,  from  Tom's  Coffee-house — a  house  in  Devereux 
Court,  Strand,  and  hardly  inferior  to  the  Chapter  Coffee-house 
as  a  place  of  resort  for  wits  and  men  of  letters. 

"  Tom's  Cofiee-house,  London,  May  30,  1770. 
"  Dear  Sister, — There  is  such  a  noise  of  business  and  politics  in  the  room, 
that  any  inaccuracy  in  writing  here  is  highly  excusable.  My  present  profes- 
sion obliges  me  to  frequent  places  of  the  best  resort.  To  begin  with  what 
every  female  conversation  begins  with — dress  :  I  employ  my  money  now  in 
fitting  myself  fashionably,  and  getting  into  good  company.  This  last  article 
always  brings  me  in  interest.  But  I  have  engaged  to  live  with  a  gentleman, 
the  brother  of  a  lord,  (a  Scotch  one,  indeed,)  who  is  going  to  advance  pretty 
deeply  into  the  bookselling  branches.  I  shall  have  board  and  lodging,  genteel 
and  elegant,  gratis  :  this  article,  in  the  quarter  of  the  town  he  lives,  with  worse 
accommodations,  would  be  50Z.  per  annum.  I  shall  have  likewise  no  incon- 
sidei'able  premium ;  and  assure  yourself  every  month  shall  end  to  your  advan- 
tage. I  will  send  you  two  silks  this  summer ;  and  expect,  in  answer  to  this, 
what  colours  you  prefer.  My  mother  shall  not  be  forgotten.  My  employment 
will  be  writing  a  voluminous  History  of  London,  to  appear  in  numbers,  the 
beginning  of  next  winter.  As  this  will  not,  like  writing  political  essays,  oblige 
me  to  go  to  the  coffee-house,  I  shall  be  able  to  serve  you  the  more  by  it ;  but 
it  will  necessitate  me  to  go  to  Oxford,  Cambridge,  Lincoln,  Coventry,  and  every 
Collegiate  Church  near — not  at  all  disagreeable  journeys,  and   not  to   me 


266  CHATTEETON  : 

expensive.  The  manuscript  glossary  I  mentioned  in  my  last  must  not  be 
omitted.  If  money  flowed  as  fast  upon  me  as  honours,  I  would  give  you 
a  portion  of  5,0001.  You  have,  doubtless,  heard  of  the  Lord  Mayor's  remon- 
strating and  addressing  the  King ;  but  it  will  be  a  piece  of  news  to  inform  you 
that  /  have  been  with  the  Lord  Mayor  on  the  occasion.  Having  addressed  an 
essay  to  his  Lordship,  it  was  very  well  received — perhaps  better  than  it 
deserved ;  and  I  waited  on  his  Lordship  to  have  his  approbation  to  address 
a  second  letter  to  him,  on  the  subject  of  the  remonstrance  and  its  reception. 
His  Lordship  received  me  as  politely  as  a  citizen  could,  and  warmly  invited 

me  to  call  on  him  again.     The  rest  is  a  secret. But  the  Devil  of  the  matter 

is,  there  is  no  money  to  be  got  on  this  side  of  the  question.  Interest  is  on  the 
other  side.  But  he  is  a  poor  author  who  cannot  write  on  both  sides.  I  believe 
I  may  be  introduced  (and  if  I  am  not,  I'll  introduce  myself)  to  a  I'uling  power 
in  the  Court  party.  I  might  have  a  recommendation  to  Sir  George  Colebrook,  an 
East  India  Director,  as  qualified  for  an  of&ce  no-ways  despicable ;  but  I  shall 
not  take  a  step  to  the  sea  whilst  I  can  continue  on  land.  I  went  yesterday  to 
Woolwich  to  see  Mr.  Wensley  :  he  is  paid  to-day.  The  artillery  is  no  unpleasant 
sight,  if  we  bar  reflection,  and  do  not  consider  how  much  mischief  it  may  do. 
Greenwich  Hospital  and  St.  Paul's  Cathedral  are  the  only  structures  which 
could  reconcile  me  to  anything  out  of  the  Gothic.  [Here  are  some  messages  to 
Mr.  Carty  about  Mrs.  Carty,  who  is  ill,  advising  him  to  'leech  her  temples 
plentifully,  and  keep  her  very  low  in  diet,  and  as  much  in  the  dark  as  possible ; ' 
also  to  Miss  Sandford,  to  Miss  Thatcher,  and  to  Miss  Rumsey,  whom  he  '  thanks 
for  her  complimentary  expression '  in  reply  to  his  last  message ;  though,  as  she 
does  not  say  whether  she  is  coming  to  London  or  not,  he  thinks  it  *  unsatis- 
factory.'] Essay -writing  has  this  advantage — you  are  sure  of  constant  pay; 
and  when  you  have  once  wrote  a  piece  which  makes  the  author  inquired  after, 
you  may  bring  the  booksellers  to  your  own  terms.  Essays  on  the  patriotic 
side  fetch  no  more  than  what  the  copy  is  sold  for.  As  the  patriots  themselves 
are  searching  for  a  place,  they  have  no  gratuities  to  spare.  So  says  one  of  the 
beggars  in  a  temporary  alteration  of  mine  in  the  Jovial  Crew : — 

*  A  patriot  was  my  occupation ; 

It  got  me  a  name,  but  no  pelf; 
Till,  starved  for  the  good  of  the  nation, 
I  begg'd  for  the  good  of  myself. 

Fal,  lal,  &c. 

*  I  told  them,  if  'twas  not  for  me 

Their  freedoms  would  all  go  to  pot; 
I  promised  to  set  them  all  free, 
But  .never  a  farthing  I  got. 

Fal,  lal,  &c.' 

"  On  the  other  hand,  unpopular  essays  will  not  even  be  accepted,  and  you 
must  pay  to  have  them  printed ;  but  then  you  seldom  lose  by  it.  Courtiei'S 
are  so  sensible  of  their  deficiency  in  merit,  that  they  generally  reward  all  who 
know  how  to  daub  them  with  the  appearance  of  it.  To  return  to  private  afiairs ; 
Friend  Slude  may  depend  upon  my  endeavouring  to  find  the  publications  you 
mention.  They  publish  the  Gospel  Magazine  here.  For  a  whim,  I  wTite  for  it. 
I  believe  there  are  not  any  sent  to  Bristol ;  they  are  hardly  worth  the  carnage 
— methodistical  and  unmeaning.  With  the  usual  ceremonies  to  my  mother 
and  grandmother,  and  sincerely,  without  ceremony,  wishing  them  both  happy 
— when  it  is  in  my  power  to  make  them  so,  it  shall  be  so — and  with  my  kind 
remembrance  to  Miss  Webb  and  Miss  Thome,  I  remain,  as  I  ever  was, 
*'  Yours,  &c.,  to  the  end  of  the  chapter, 

**  Thomas  Chatterton. 

**  P.S. — I  am  this  moment  pierced  through  the  heart  by  the  black  eye  of  a 
young  lady,  driving  along  in  a  hackney-coach.  I  am  quite  in  love ;  if  my  love 
lasts  till  that  time,  you  shall  hear  of  it  in  my  next." 


A   STORY    OF   THE   YEAR    1770.  267 

After  this  letter,  there  is  a  blank  in  the  correspondence,  so 
far  as  it  has  been  preserved,  for  three  weeks.  During  these 
three  weeks,  we  are  now  able  to  say,  an  event  of  some  im- 
portance in  Chatterton's  London  life  took  place — to  wit,  a 
change  of  lodging.  It  has  hitherto  been  assumed  by  his 
biographers  that  he  remained  in  his  original  lodgings,  at  Mr. 
Walmsley's,  in  Shoreditch,  till  the  first  week  of  July.  This 
assumption,  even  according  to  the  evidence  which  the  biogra- 
phers who  have  made  it  had  before  them,  was  hardly  pardon- 
able ;  for  one  of  Chatterton's  published  poems,  which  bears  the 
date  of  June  12,  is  dated  also  from  the  new  place  of  lodging 
which  he  is  known  to  have  occupied  during  the  latter  portion 
of  his  residence  in  the  metropolis.  Other  evidence,  which 
has  only  recently  been  made  accessible,  confirms  the  accuracy 
of  this  date,  and  proves  that  he  must  have  left  Mr. Walmsley's 
in  the  early  part  of  the  month  of  June. 

From  the  very  first,  it  may  be  imagined,  he  regarded 
Mr  .Walmsley's  as  only  a  temporary  residence,  convenient  until 
he  found  a  better.  The  economy  of  Mr.  Walmsley's  house 
was  probably  by  no  means  to  his  taste.  To  have  to  share  a 
bedroom  with  Master  Walmsley,  and  to  be  continually  in 
contact  with  the  various  inmates  of  the  plasterer's  house,  more 
especially  Mrs.  Ballance,  who  would  persist  in  calling  him 
"  Cousin  Tommy,"  must  have  been  disagreeable  to  him  on 
more  accounts  than  one.  Besides,  had  there  been  no  other 
reason  for  a  change,  the  distance  of  Shoreditch  from  the  pub- 
lishing-offices, where  he  had  to  make  his  calls,  and  from  the 
coffee-houses  and  other  places  of  resort  which  he  believed 
himself  bound  to  frequent,  would  have  been  a  sufficient  one. 
Accordingly,  as  soon  as  he  began  to  see  his  way  clear  to  future 
employment,  he  determined  quietly  to  seek  another  lodging. 
During  the  first  week  of  June  we  may  fancy  him  going  about 
on  the  search  through  all  the  likely  streets  that  take  his  fancy 
within  a  moderate  radius  from  Paternoster  Row.  At  last, 
some  afternoon,  going  up  Holborn  towards  the  West  End, 
after  calling  at  the  office  of  the  Middlesex  in  Shoe  Lane,  he  is 
caught  by  the  appearance  of  Brooke  Street,  a  tidy,  quiet- 
looking  street,  striking  off  from  Holborn  on  the  right,  a  little 


268  CHATTERTON  : 

on  the  City-side  of  Gray's  Inn  Lane.  He  turns  aside  from 
Holbom  into  this  street,  sees  perhaps  various  tickets  of 
"  Kooms  to  let"  hung  up  in  the  windows ;  but,  on  the  whole, 
likes  best  one  particular  house  so  distinguished,  on  tlie  door  of 
which  he  sees  the  name  of  "  Mrs.  Angell,  Sack-maker."  (The 
term  "sack-maker,"  from  "sack"  or  '^  sac'' — the  older  na- 
turalized French  name  of  one  portion  of  feminine  attire,  which 
we  now  render  by  another — was  then  equivalent,  or  nearly  so, 
to  our  term  "  dress-maker.")  At  the  door  of  this  house,  after 
sufficient  inspection  of  it  from  the  outside,  he  knocks  rather 
loudly.  The  knock  is  answered,  probably  by  Mrs.  Angell  her- 
self— a  pleasant-looking  person,  as  we  fancy,  of  between  forty 
and  fifty  years  of  age.  He  states  his  object ;  is  shown  various 
rooms,  all  unlet,  of  which  he  may  have  his  choice ;  and  in  the 
end  bargains  for  one,  which  is  both  bedroom  and  sitting-room, 
situated  almost  at  the  top  of  the  house,  immediately  "  under 
the  garret,"  but  with  the  window  to  the  front.  Thither, 
either  the  same  day  or  within  a  day  or  two,  he  removes  his 
things,  alleging  no  reason  either  to  Mrs.  Walmsley  or  to  Mrs. 
Ballance,  as  they  afterwards  told  Sir  Herbert  Croft,  for  his 
leaving  them  so  suddenly.  On  cleaning  up  the  room  he  had 
occupied,  after  he  was  gone,  they  found  the  floor  "  covered 
with  little  pieces  of  paper,  the  remains  of  his  poetings."  It 
seems,  however,  that  he  did  not  all  at  once  cease  his  visits  at 
Walmsley's  house,  but  for  some  time  at  least  continued  to  call 
there  in  the  course  of  the  day. 

If  the  tradition  is  correct,  one  may  yet  identify  the  actual 
house  in  Brooke  Street,  Holborn,  where  Mrs.  Angell  lived,  and 
where,  after  the  first  week  of  June,  1770,  Chatterton  had  his 
lodging.  Mr.  Peter  Cunningham,  whose  authority  in  all  such 
matters  is  the  best  that  can  be  had,  states  in  his  Handhooh 
of  London  that  the  house  was  No.  4,  Brooke  Street.  If  so, 
then  it  was  at  the  better  end  of  the  street,  and  was  the  fourth 
of  those  houses,  counting  from  Holborn,  on  the  right  hand, 
which  having  been  formed  into  one  range  of  premises  in  1789, 
by  Mr.  Oldham,  a  stove  and  grate  manufacturer,  are  now 
occupied,  in  the  same  connected  fashion,  by  an  extensive 
furniture  dealer,  whose  main-door  is  in  Holborn.    The  house, 


A   STORY   OF  THE   YEAR  1770.  269 

with  the  rest  of  the  comer-'block  so  tenanted,  is  conspicuonsly 
visible,  it  ought  to  be  known,  to  the  outside  passengers  of 
every  omnibus  going  down  Holborn  towards  the  City.  The 
tradition  has  clung  about  this  house ;  and  the  outer  aspect 
corresponds.  The  houses  in  the  block  are  all  old ;  and  though, 
in  consequence  of  their  union  into  one  range  of  premises,  the 
separate  doors  towards  Brooke  Street,  as  well  as  the  separate 
partition-walls  on  the  lower  stories,  have  disappeared,  the 
upper  windows  retain  a  look  of  eighty  years  ago.  Nor  have 
any  houses  in  the  street  such  distinct  sub-garrets.  Standing  on 
the  same  side  of  the  street,  you  count  but  four  stories,  and  think 
these  make  the  houses  high  enough ;  but  when  you  cross  to 
the  other  side,  you  see  that  the  roof  slants  oif  very  obtusely 
above  the  fourth  row  of  windows,  so  as  to  afford  room  for 
another  nearly  perpendicular  row  among  the  tiles,  under  the 
true  garrets.  In  one  of  these  rooms,  if  our  present  notion  is 
correct,  Chatterton  had  his  abode.  And  a  far  more  cheerful 
lodging,  in  external  respects,  it  must  have  been  than  the 
one  he  had  left  at  Shoreditch  —  high  above  most  of  the 
houses,  with  the  airy  heaven  above,  and  a  prospect  of 
roofs  and  chimneys  round,  and  yet,  if  he  chose  to  stretch  a 
little  over  the  window,  a  sight  of  Brooke  Street  below 
and  the  thoroughfare  of  Holborn  to  the  left.  The  street 
was  respectable  itself,  with  good  enough  shops  in  it;  and 
only  at  the  inner  end — where  it  widens  into  a  little  irregular 
space,  and  bends  off  into  alleys,  affording  room  for  a 
small  shabby  market  for  meat,  vegetables,  and  the  like, 
known  in  the  neighbourhood  as  Brooke  Market — did  it  lead 
into  questionable  purlieus. 

We  should  not  perhaps  have  been  so  particular  in  describ- 
ing the  place,  but  that,  in  Chatterton' s  very  next  letter, 
there  is  a  description  of  the  street  in  one  of  its  nocturnal 
aspects,  which  might  not  otherwise  be  so  intelligible.  This 
letter,  which  is  dated  the  19th  of  June,  has  hitherto  been 
necessarily  supposed  to  have  been  written  at  Shoreditch ; 
but  it  is  in  itself,  if  well  attended  to  by  those  who  know 
the  topography  of  London,  an  additional  proof  that  he 
had   already   quitted   that   neighbourhood.     It  was  written, 


270  CHATTERTON  : 

we  calculate,  a  week  or  ten  days  after  lie  had  gone  to  lodge 
at  Mrs.  Angell's. 

"  June  19,  1770. 
"  Dear  Sister, — I  have  an  horrid  cold.  The  relation  of  the  manner  of  my 
catching  it  may  give  you  more  pleasure  than  the  circumstance  itself.  As  I 
wrote  very  late  Svmday  night  (or,  rather,  very  early  Monday  morning)  I  thought 
to  have  gone  to  bed  pretty  soon  last  night ;  when,  being  half  undressed,  I  heard 
a  very  doleful  voice  singing  Miss  HiU's  favourite  Bedlamite  song.  The  hum- 
di-um  of  the  voice  so  struck  me,  that,  though  I  was  obliged  to  listen  a  long 
while  before  I  covild  hear  the  words,  I  found  the  similitude  in  the  sound.  After 
hearing  her,  with  pleasure,  drawl  for  about  half-an-hour,  she  jumped  into  a 
brisker  tune,  and  hobbled  out  the  ever-famous  song  in  which  poor  Jack 
Fowler  was  to  have  been  satirized.  '  I  put  my  hand  into  a  bush,'  '  I  pricked 
my  finger  to  the  bone,'  '  I  saw  a  ship  sailing  along,'  *  I  thought  the  sweetest 
flowers  to  find,'  and  other  pretty  flowery  expressions,  were  twanged  with  no 
inharmonious  bray.  I  now  ran  to  the  window,  and  threw  up  the  sash,  resolved 
to  be  satisfied  whether  or  no  it  was  the  identical  Miss  Hill  in  propHd  persond. 
But  alas  !  it  was  a  person  whose  twang  is  very  well  known  when  she  is  awake, 
but  who  had  drunk  so  much  royal  bob  (the  gingerbread-baker  for  that,  you 
know  !)  that  she  was  now  singing  herself  asleep.  This  somnifying  liquor  had 
made  her  voice  so  like  the  sweet  echo  of  Miss  Hill's,  that  if  I  had  not  imagined 
that  she  could  not  see  her  way  up  to  London,  I  should  absolutely  have 
imagined  it  hers.  [Here,  for  some  lines,  the  letter  is  hardly  legible;  but  Chat- 
terton  seems  to  say  that  in  the  street  under  his  window  he  saw,  besides  the 
singer,  a  fellow  loitering  about  in  bad  female  company;  which  fellow  he  had 
again,  that  very  morning,  on  his  return  from  *  Marybone  Gardens,'  seen  in 
custody  '  at  the  watch-house  in  the  parish  of  St.  Giles.'  He  then  describes  a 
third  figure  who  completed  the  picturesque  street-group,  as  follows :]  A  drunken 
fisherman,  who  sells  souse  mackarel  and  other  delicious  dainties,  to  the  eternal 
detriment  of  all  two-penny  ordinaries — as  his  best  commodity,  his  salmon,  goes 
off  at  three  halfpence  the  piece — this  itinerant  merchant,  this  moveable  fish- 
stall,  having  likewise  had  his  dose  of  bob-royal,  stood  still  for  a  while,  and  then 
joined  chorus  in  a  tone  which  would  have  laid  haK-a-dozen  lawyers,  pleading 
for  their  fees,  fast  asleep.  This  naturally  reminded  me  of  Mr.  Haythome's 
song  of 

'  Says  Plato,  who-oy-oy-oy  should  man  be  vain  ? ' 

"  However,  my  entertainment,  though  sweet  enough  in  itself,  has  a  dish  of 
sour  sauce  served  up  in  it ;  for  I  have  a  most  horrible  wheezing  in  the  throat. 
But  I  don't  repent  that  I  have  this  cold;  for  there  are  so  many  nostrums  here, 
that  'tis  worth  a  man's  while  to  get  a  distemper,  he  can  be  cured  so  cheap." 

Chatterton  does  not  despatch  this  letter  immediatelj,  but 
keeps  it  by  him  for  ten  days,  when  he  adds  a  postscript  as 
follows : — 

"  June  29lh,  1770. — My  cold  is  over  and  gone.  If  the  above  did  not  recall 
to  your  mind  some  sense  of  laughter,  you  have  lost  your  ideas  of  risibility." 

The  letter  may  have  made  his  sister  laugh,  as  was  intended ; 
but  on  us,  at  this  distance  of  time,  the  impression  is  very 
different.  We  remember  a  passage  in  Pepys's  Diary  which 
struck  us  perhaps  more  than  anything  else  in  that  entertain- 
ing book.     It  was  a  passage  describing  an  excursion  which 


A   STORY   OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  271 

Pepjs  and  some  companions  belonging  to  the  Navy-office 
made  down  the  river  Thames.  They  returned  at  night, 
when  it  was  pitch  dark,  making  their  way  slowly  and  with 
much  trepidation  along  the  middle  of  the  river  as  near  as 
they  could  guess,  and  hailing  the  moored  craft  that  they 
passed,  in  order  to  ascertain  their  whereabouts.  Not  a  soul, 
however,  seemed  to  be  awake  on  the  whole  river,  to  answer 
their  cries  ;  and  the  only  sound  they  could  hear  was  that  of 
a  dog  incessantly  barking  somewhere,  either  on  the  south  side 
of  the  river,  or  on  board  of  some  vessel  left  to  his  charge. 
The  barking  of  that  dog  has  been  in  our  ears  ever  since  ;  inti- 
mating, as  it  were,  with  a  kind  of  ghastly  vividness,  which 
none  of  all  Pepys's  other  commemorations,  though  they  are 
vivid  enough,  can  match,  that  those  old  days  of  Pepys  really 
and  authentically  were,  that  the  black  river  flowed  then  at 
night,  and  that  a  world  of  now  defunct  life  alternately  roared 
and  reposed  on  its  banks.  And  so  with  this  last-quoted 
letter  of  Chatterton.  As  we  read  it  we  are  in  Brooke  Street, 
Holborn,  on  a  summer  night  eighty-six  years  ago.  And 
what  do  we  see  ?  A  wretched,  drunken  woman  passing  from 
side  to  side  in  the  faint  light,  and  disturbing  the  deserted 
street  with  snatches  of  song;  after  a  while,  a  male  coster- 
monger,  also  drunk,  reeling  out  from  some  neighbouring 
obscurity,  and,  caught  by  the  music,  joining  it  on  his  own 
account  with  a  stentorian  bass ;  and  meantime,  standing  at 
a  corner,  indifferently  looking  on,  a  hulking  figure  of  "  the 
dangerous  class,"  who  completes  the  trio.  And  is  this  all? 
Hist !  An  upper  window  in  one  of  the  houses,  in  which  the 
light  has  not  yet  been  put  out,  is  thrown  up,  and  the  head 
and  face  of  a  young  man  emerge  ;  a  wonderful  head  and  face, 
if  we  could  see  them,  the  face  pale,  under  dark  clustering 
hair,  and  the  eye  a  bold  and  burning  grey.  He  leans  out, 
surveys  the  street  group  far  below,  seems  interested ;  and  with 
his  face  resting  on  his  two  hands,  and  his  elbows  resting  on 
the  window-sill,  he  remains  gazing  out  half-an-hour  or  more. 
O  month  of  June,  1770 !  and  is  this  the  kind  of  educating 
circumstance  you  provide  for  Chatterton,  solitary  in  his 
London  lodging,  and  alert  in  his  solitude  for  objects  to  occupy 


272  chatterton: 

his  eyes,  and  incite  him  to  new  trains  of  thought  ?  A  poor 
sleeping  street,  and  a  serenade  of  two  drunkards  !  No ;  as 
he  gazes,  the  drunkards  reel  out  of  view  into  other  streets, 
their  voices  growing  fainter  as  they  go  ;  the  hulking  fellow  at 
the  corner  also  moves  off,  destiny  guiding  him  along  Holborn 
to  St.  Giles's  watch-house ;  the  street  then,  though  still 
the  same  narrow  and  poor  one,  is  swept  at  least  of  its  human 
degradation  ;  the  mood  of  the  gazer  changes  also ;  and  though 
he  remains  still  gazing,  it  is  not  at  the  street  any  longer,  but 
at  the  soft  summer  stars  ! 

One  letter  more  closes  the  series  of  those  sent  by  Chat- 
terton to  Bristol  during  his  first  two  months  in  London.  It 
is  addressed  to  his  friend  T.  Cary,  and  bears  no  date.  From 
some  allusions  in  the  letter,  however,  we  are  able  to  say  with 
tolerable  certainty  that  it  was  written  on  June  29th  or  30th, 
the  day  before  the  June  magazine-day.  A  considerable  part 
of  the  letter  is  taken  up  with  an  answer  to  some  objections 
which  Cary  had  made  to  a  panegyric  of  Chatterton' s  on  Mr. 
Allen,  the  organist  of  Bristol,  at  the  expense  of  his  brother 
organist  Mr.  Broderip.  The  panegyric  is  undoubtedly  that 
contained  in  the  long  poem  called  Kew  Gardens,  written 
before  Chatterton  had  left  Bristol,  and  still  unpublished,  but 
which  Cary  had,  it  seems,  just  been  reading  in  manuscript : — 

"  "WTiat  charms  has  music,  when  great  Broderip  sweats 
To  tortm-e  sound  to  what  his  brother  sets  ! 
With  scraps  of  ballad-tunes,  and  gude  Scotch  sangs, 
Which  god-like  Ramsay  to  his  bagpipe  twangs ; 
With  tatter'd  fragments  of  forgotten  plays ; 
With  Playford's  melody  to  Sternhold's  lays ; 
This  pipe  of  science,  mighty  Broderip  comes, 
And  a  strange,  unconnected  jumble  thrums. 
Roused  to  devotion  in  a  sprightly  air, 
Danced  into  piety,  and  jigg'd  to  prayer, 
A  modem  hornpipe's  murder  greets  our  ears, 
The  heavenly  music  of  domestic  spheres ; 
The  flying  band  in  swift  transition  hops 
Through  all  the  tortured,  vile  burlesque  of  stops. 
Sacred  to  sleep,  in  superstition's  key. 
Dull,  doleful  diapasons  die  away ; 
Sleep  spreads  his  silken  wings,  and,  lull'd  by  sound, 
The  vicar  slumbers,  and  the  snore  goes  round  ; 
Whilst  Broderip  at  his  passive  organ  groans 
Through  all  his  slow  variety  of  tones. 

How  unlike  Allen  !     Allen  is  divine. 
His  touch  is  sentimental,  tender,  fine ; 


A   STORY  OF  THE  YEAR   1770.  273 

No  little  affectations  e'er  disgraced 

His  more  refined,  his  sentimental  taste ; 

He  keeps  the  passions  with  the  sound  in  play, 

And  the  soul  trembles  with  the  trembling  key." 

Gary,  probably  in  a  letter  sent  after  Chatterton  to  London, 
had  objected  to  this  as  too  partial  to  Allen,  and  as  unfair  to 
Broderip.  Chatterton,  premising  that  he  believes  "  there  are 
very  few  in  Bristol  who  know  what  music  is,"  defends  his 
comparative  estimate  of  the  two  organists,  and  reiterates  his 
praise  of  Allen  in  strong  terms,  and  his  contempt  for  his 
rival.  "  I  am  afraid,  my  dear  friend,"  he  says,  "  you  do  not 
understand  the  merit  of  a  full  piece  ;  if  you  did,  you  would 
confess  to  me  that  Allen  is  the  only  organist  you  have  in 
Bristol."     He  then  continues  : — 

"  A  song  of  mine  is  a  great  favourite  with  the  town,  on  account  of  the  fulness 
of  the  music.  It  has  much  of  Mr.  Allen's  manner  in  the  air.  You  will  see 
that  and  twenty  more  in  print,  after  the  season  is  over.  I  yesterday  heard 
several  airs  of  my  burletta  sung  to  the  harpsichord,  horns,  bassoons,  hautboys, 
violins,  &c,,  and  will  venture  to  pronounce,  from  the  excellence  of  the  music, 
that  it  will  take  with  the  town.  Observe,  I  write  in  all  the  magazines.  I  am 
surprised  you  took  no  notice  of  the  last  London.  In  that  and  the  magazine 
coming  out  to-morrow  are  the  only  two  pieces  I  have  the  vanity  to  call  poetry. 
Mind  the  Political  Register.  I  am  very  intimately  acquainted  with  the  editor, 
who  is  also  editor  of  another  publication.  You  will  find  not  a  little  of  mine  in 
the  London  Museum,  and  Town  and  Country.  The  printers  of  the  daily  publi- 
cations are  all  frightened  out  of  their  patriotism,  and  will  take  nothing  unless 
'tis  moderate  or  ministei-ial.  I  have  not  had  five  patriotic  essays  this  fortnight. 
AU  must  be  ministerial  or  entertaining.     I  remain  yours,  &c. 

"T.  Chatterton." 

We  have  presented  the  last  four  letters  in  their  series,  with 
no  other  remarks  than  were  necessary  to  make  their  meaning 
clear."^  It  is  obvious,  however,  that  if  we  are  to  ascertain  the 
real  coherent  story  of  Chatterton's  London-life  during  the 
two  months  they  include,  i.  e.,  during  the  six  or  seven  weeks 
of  his  residence  at  Shoreditch,  and  the  first  two  or  three  of 
his  residence  in  Brooke  Street,  we  must  go  over  the  ground  for 
ourselves,  weaving  the  facts  together,  along  with  others  inde- 
pendently known,  and  allowing  for  his  exaggerations. 

In  the  first  place  then,  we  repeat,  there  is  abundant  evi- 
dence that  Chatterton's  activity  during  his  first  two  months 

*  All  the  letters  of  Chatteiton  contained  in  this  chapter,  with  the  exception 
of  that  to  Gary,  were  first  collected  and  printed  by  Sir  Herbert  Croft  in  his 
Love  and  Madness;  from  the  second  edition  of  which,  published  in  1786,  we 
have  taken  them. 


274  CHATTERTON : 

in  London,  his  perseverance  in  introducing  himself  and  trying 
to  form  connexions,  was  something  unparalleled.  Very  few 
young  men  of  his  age,  we  believe,  would  have  gone  through 
this  preliminary  part  of  the  business  with  half  the  courage 
and  self-assurance  which  he  showed.  We  believe  him  to 
have  been  capable  of  ringing  at  any  number  of  bells,  and 
sending  in  his  card,  known  or  unknown,  to  any  number  of 
persons,  in  the  course  of  a  forenoon  ;  and  we  sometimes  won- 
der at  how  many  of  all  the  doors  in  London  he  did  actually 
present  himself  during  his  stay  there.  Fell,  Edmunds, 
Hamilton,  and  Dodsley,  as  we  have  said,  were  the  persons  he 
began  with ;  but  he  soon  added  to  the  circle  of  those  whom 
he  favoured  with  his  calls,  others,  and  still  others.  That  he 
might  the  more  easily  carry  out  his  plan  of  getting  ac- 
quainted with  people  likely  to  be  of  use  to  him,  he  went 
daily  to  the  Chapter  Coffee-house,  Tom's  Coffee-house,  and  the 
like  places  of  resort ;  entering,  we  doubt  not,  into  conversa- 
tion with  many  who  gave  him  short  answers,  and  wondered 
who  in  the  world  he  was.  Considering  how  these  places 
were  frequented,  there  may  have  been  many  of  the  men  of 
note  at  that  time  in  London  who  had,  in  this  way,  seen  Chat- 
terton  without  knowing  it.  "  I  am  quite  familiar,"  he  says 
in  his  letter  of  the  6th  of  May,  "  at  the  Chapter  Coffee- 
house, and  know  all  the  geniuses  there."  One  notes,  how- 
ever, that  in  his  postscript  to  his  next  letter,  of  May  14th, 
he  retracts  the  direction  he  had  given  to  his  mother  and 
his  friends  to  address  to  him  at  the  Chapter,  and  bids  them 
address  him  "  at  Mr.  Walmsley's,  Shoreditch,  only."  Had 
he  received  any  rebuff  at  the  Chapter,  which  made  him  dis- 
continue the  house?  If  so,  there  were  other  coffee-houses 
besides  Tom's.  The  theatres,  too,  and  other  places  of  amuse- 
ment served  his  purpose.  By  the  28th  of  May,  indeed,  as 
we  have  seen,  both  Drury  Lane  and  Covent  Garden  were 
closed  for  the  season;  but  during  the  preceding  month  he 
had  no  doubt  visited  both  several  times,  at  once  enjoying  the 
play,  and,  as  on  the  occasion  he  mentions  in  his  letter  of  the 
14th,  picking  up  friends  in  the  pit.  After  the  great  theatres 
were   closed,  there  were  still   some  minor  ones,  as  well  as 


b 


A  STORY   OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  275 


Eanelagh  Gardens  and  Marjlebone  Gardens,  where  there 
was  music  and  other  entertainment;  and  there,  too,  Chat- 
terton  occasionally  paid  his  half-crown,  flattering  himself  it 
was  an  investment. 

So  much  for  the  effort  made;  next  as  to  the  success. 
Making  every  allowance  for  his  own  exaggerations,  we 
believe  it  to  have  been  by  no  means  inconsiderable.  Let 
us  see. 

His  great  object  evidently  after  his  first  arrival  in  London, 
was  to  distinguish  himself  as  a  political  writer  on  the 
"  patriotic"  or  Opposition  side.  This  was  to  be  his  short  cut 
to  fame  and  wealth.  To  write  such  letters  for  the  Middlesex 
Journal,  the  Freeholder's  Magazine,  and  other  Opposition 
papers,  as  should  rival  those  of  Junius,  and  make  himself  be 
inquired  after  by  the  heads  of  the  party,  and  so  put  forward 
and  provided  for— this  was  the  immediate  form  of  his  ambi- 
tion. Fell  and  Edmunds  were  here  his  chief  reliance ;  but, 
above  all,  he  desired  to  be  introduced  to  Wilkes.  Could 
that  be  done,  his  fortune  would  be  made  !  And  Fell,  as  we 
have  seen,  was  to  manage  it  for  him.  Unfortunately,  when 
the  promised  time  came,  Fell  was  not  in  a  position  to  keep 
his  promise,  having  been  laid  up  in  the  King's  Bench  for 
debt,  where  Chatterton  visits  him.  Edmunds,  too,  was  put 
out  of  reach  about  the  same  time,  having  been  made  an 
example  of  by  the  Government,  and  thrown  into  Newgate, 
by  way  of  warning  to  "patriotic"  publishers.  The  incarce- 
ration of  these  two  friends  of  Chatterton  at  the  very  time 
when  he  was  expecting  so  much  from  them,  must,  one  would 
think,  have  been  a  misfortune.  But  he  represents  it  other- 
wise. The  Freeholder  had  only  gone  into  other  hands,  and 
he  should  be  able  to  write  for  it  yet,  on  even  better  terms 
than  if  Fell  had  remained  editor !  The  Middlesex  Journal, 
too,  was  still  to  go  on  (Hamilton  of  the  Town  and  Country 
Magazine  had  come  to  the  rescue,  and  taken  it  up)  ;  so  that 
here  also  he  should  be  no  worse  off  than  before !  Nor  were 
these  anticipations  falsified.  For  the  Freeholder  indeed,  he 
does  not  appear  to  have  written  much  after  this  date ;  the 
only  subsequent  contribution  to  its  pages  that  can  with  toler- 

T  2 


276  CHATTERTON : 

able  certainty  be  traced  to  him,  being  a  letter,  in  the  Junius 
style,  to  the  Premier,  Lord  North,  which  was  not  published 
till  the  August  number.  But  for  the  Middlesex,  under 
Hamilton,  he  continued  to  write  busily.  At  least  five  letters 
have  been  disinterred  from  the  columns  of  this  old  news- 
paper, all  printed  in  the  month  of  May,  1770,  and  which 
there  is  good  reason  to  believe  were  Chatterton's.*  They 
are  all  signed   "  Decimus."     The  first,  published  May  10th, 

is  addressed  to  the  Earl  of  H h  (Hillsborough,  Minister 

for  the  American  colonies) ;  the  second,  published  May  15th, 

is  to  the  P D of  W (^'.  e.,  the  Princess  Dowager 

of  Wales) ;  the  third,  published  May  22nd,  is  to  the  Prime 
Minister  himself;  the  fourth,  published  May  26th,  is  not  a 
letter,  but  a  kind  of  squib,  proposing  a  series  of  subjects  for 
an  exhibition  of  sign-board  paintings  ;  and  the  last  is  a  letter 
"to  the  Freeholders  of  the  city  of  Bristol,"  bidding  them 
shake  off  their  lethargy,  and  imitate  the  glorious  example  of 
London.     We  quote  a  sample  or  two  of  these  effusions. 

From  the  Letter  to  the  Earl  of  Hillsborough,  May  10. — "  My  Lord, — If  a  con- 
stant exercise  of  tyranny  and  cruelty  has  not  steeled  your  heart  against  all 
sensations  of  compunction  and  remorse,  permit  me  to  remind  you  of  the  recent 
massacre  in  Boston.  It  is  an  infamous  attribute  of  the  ministry  of  the  Thane, 
that  what  his  tools  begin  in  secret  fraud  and  oppression  ends  in  murder  and 
avowed  assassination.  Not  contented  to  deprive  us  of  our  liberty,  they  rob 
us  of  our  lives ;  knowing,  from  a  sad  experience,  that  the  one  without  the 
other  is  an  insupportable  burden.  Your  Lordship  has  bravely  distinguished 
yourself  among  the  ministers  of  the  present  reign.  Whilst  North  and  the 
instruments  of  his  royal  mistress  settled  the  plan  of  operation,  it  was  your 
part  to  execute ;  you  were  the  assassin  whose  knife  was  ever  ready  to  finish  the 
crime.  If  every  feeling  of  humanity  is  not  extinct  in  you,  reflect,  for  a  moment 
reflect,  on  the  horrid  task  you  undertook  and  perpetrated.  Think  of  the 
injury  you  have  done  to  your  country,  which  nothing  but  the  dissolution  of 
a  Parliament,  not  representing  the  people,  can  erase.  .  .  .  Think  of  the 
recent  murders  at  Boston.  0  my  Lord  !  however  you  may  force  a  smile  into 
your  countenance,  however  you  may  trifle  in  the  train  of  dissipation,  your 
conscience  must  raise  a  hell  within,"  &c.  &c. 

From  the  Letter  to  the  Princess  Dowager  of  Wales,  May  15.     .     .     .     "I  could 

wish  your  R H would  know  how  to  act  worthy  your  situation  in  life, 

and  not  debase  yourself  by  mingling  with  a  group  of  ministers,  the  most 
detestable  that  ever  embroiled  a  kingdom  in  discord  and  commotion.     Your 

consequence  in  the  Council  can  arise  only  from  your  power  over  his  M y; 

and  that  power  you  possess  but  by  the  courtesy  of  an  unaccountable  infatu- 
ation. Filial  duty  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  question  :  a  king  has  no  mother, 
no  wife,  no  friend,  considered  as  a  king :  his  country,  his  subjects,  are  the  only 
objects  of  his  public  concern."    .... 

*  These  letters  were  first  reprinted  from  the  Middlesex  Journal,  by  Mr.  Dix, 
in  his  Life  of  Chatterton. 


A  STOEY  OF  THE  YEAR  1770.  27f 

From  the  Letter  to  the  Premier,  May  22.  .  .  .  "Fly  to  the  Cottncil,  with  your 
face  whitened  with  fear ;  tell  them  that  justice  is  at  the  door,  and  the  axe  will 
do  its  office ;  tell  them  that  whilst  the  spirit  of  English  freedom  exists,  ven- 
geance has  also  an  existence ;  and  when  Britons  are  denied  justice  from  the 
powers  who  have  the  trust  of  their  rights,  the  Constitution  hath  given  them 
a  power  to  do  themselves  justice." 

From  the  Squib  descHbing  an  Exhibition  of  Sign-paintings,  May  26.  .  .  "  No.  3. 
*  The  Union:'  An  Englishman  sleeping  and  a  Scotchman  picking  his  pocket — 

'  The  K ; '  a  sign  for  a  button-maker.     The  painter,  who  has  not  fixed  his 

design  to  this  performance,  is  certainly  a  very  loyal  subject.     His  M has 

that  innocent  vacancy  of  countenance  which  distinguishes  the  representation 
of  angels  and  cherubims  ;  without  guilt,  without  meaning,  without  everything 
but  an  undesigning  simplicity."  ... 

From  the  Letter  to  the  Freeholders  of  Bristol,  May  26.  "  Gentlemen, — As  a 
fellow-citizen,  I  presume  to  address  you  on  a  subject  which  I  hoped  would  have 
animated  an  abler  pen.  At  this  critical  situation,  when  the  fate  of  the  Consti- 
tution depends  upon  the  exertion  of  an  English  spirit,  I  confess  my  astonish- 
ment at  finding  you  silent.  The  second  city  in  England  should  not  be 
ashamed  to  copy  the  first  in  any  laudable  measure.  .  .  .  Remember  the  speech 
of  the  glorious  Canynge,  in  whose  repeated  mayoralties  honour  and  virtue  were 
not  unknown  in  the  corporation.  When  the  unhappy  dissensions  first  broke 
out  between  the  houses  of  Lancaster  and  York,  he  immediately  declared  him- 
self for  the  latter.  His  lady,  fearful  of  the  consequences,  begged  him  to  desist 
and  not  ruin  himself  and  family.  *  My  family,'  replied  the  brave  citizen,  *  is 
dear  to  me— Heaven  can  witness  how  dear  !  But  when  discord  and  oppressions 
begin  to  distract  the  realm,  my  country  is  my  family;  and  that  it  is  my  duty 
to  protect.' " 

These  few  samples  will  show  hoV  well  Chatterton  had 
caught  the  trick  of  the  Opposition/politics  of  the  day,  and 
how  expertly  he  could  dress  up  the  popular  commonplaces. 
That  his  contributions,  such  as  they  were,  were  thought  of 
some  value  by  the  conductors  of  the  Middlesex  Journal  is 
proved  by  the  fact  that  there  was  one  of  them  in  at  least 
every  alternate  number  during  the  whole  month  of  May,  and 
that  two  or  three  of  them  are  printed  in  what  would  be  con- 
sidered the  chief  place  in  the  paper. 

But  Chatterton  was  not  content  with  writing  only  for  the 
Middlesex.  He  probably  tried  others  of  the  Opposition  news- 
papers, including  even  the  great  Pullic  Advertiser  itself, 
which  Junius  had  made  illustrious.  Then,  as  we  shall  see, 
there  were  various  Magazines  or  Monthlies,  besides  the  Free- 
holder, to  which  he  sent  more  elaborate  contributions  in  the 
same  political  strain  for  publication  at  the  end  of  the  month, 
or  whenever  else  they  appeared.  Of  these,  one  was  the  Poli- 
tical Register.  "  Mind  the  Political  Register;'  he  says  to  his 
friend  Gary  in  the  end  of  June :  "  I  am  very  intimately 
acquainted  with  the  editor,  who  is  also  editor  of  another  pub- 


278  CHATTERTON  : 

lication."  The  acquaintance  had  probably  commenced  before 
the  end  of  May;  and  it  is  with  the  circumstance  of  his 
writing  for  this  periodical  that  we  are  disposed  to  connect  the 
story  of  his  introduction  to  Beckford,  as  related  by  himself  to 
his  sister  in  his  letter  of  the  30th  of  that  month.  The  facts 
seem  to  be  as  follows : — 

Anxious  from  the  first  to  get  as  near  the  centre  of  affairs  as 
he  could,  and  disappointed,  by  Fell's  mishap,  of  his  expected 
introduction  to  Wilkes,  he  conceived  the  idea  of  making 
a  bold  stroke  so  as  to  bring  himself  into  direct  relations  with 
the  man  who,  for  the  time,  was  even  more  of  a  popular  hero 
than  Wilkes — the  Lord  Mayor  Beckford.  His  plan  was  to 
write  a  letter  to  his  Lordship  on  affairs  in  general,  and  more 
particularly  in  praise  of  his  Lordship's  conduct  as  the  cham- 
pion of  the  city  in  their  struggle  with  the  Government.  Here 
is  a  specimen  of  what  he  said : — 

"  My  Lord, — The  steps  you  have  hitherto  taken  in  the  service  of  your 
country  demand  the  warmest  thanks  the  gratitude  of  an  Englishman  can 
give.  That  you  will  persevere  in  the  glorious  task,  is  the  wish  of  every  one 
who  is  a  friend  to  the  constitution  of  this  country.  Your  integiity  ensures 
you  from  falling  into  the  infamy  of  apostacy ;  and  your  understanding  is  a 
sufficient  guard  against  the  secret  measures  of  the  ministry,  who  are  vile 
enough  to  stick  at  no  villany  to  complete  their  detestable  purposes.  Nor  can 
your  British  heart  stoop  to  fear  the  contemptible  threatenings  of  a  set  of 
hireling  wretches  who  have  no  power  but  what  they  derive  from  a  person 

who  engrosses  every  power  and  every  vice If  the  massacre  of  the 

Bostonians  was  not  concerted  by  the  ministry,  they  were  to  be  enslaved  in 
consequence  of  a  settled  plan  ;  and  as  the  one  was  the  result  of  the  other,  our 
worthy  ministers  were  the  assassins.  Alas  !  the  unhappy  town  had  not 
a  Beckford  !  He  would  have  checked  the  audacious  insolence  of  the  army,  and 

dared,  as  an  Englishman,  to  make  use  of  his  freedom His  Majesty's 

behaviour,  when  he  received  the  complaints  of  his  people  (not  to  redress  them 
indeed,  but  to  get  rid  of  them,  an  easier  way)  was  something  particular  :  it  was 
set,  formal,  and  studied.  Should  you  address  him  again,  my  Lord,  it  would 
not  be  amiss  to  tell  his  Majesty  that  you  expect  Ats  answer,  and  not  the  answer 

of  his  mother  or  ministers Your  Lordship  has  proved  the  goodness  of 

your  heart,  the  soundness  of  your  principles,  and  the  merit  of  the  cause  in 
which  you  are  engaged,  by  the  rectitude  of  your  conduct.  Scandal  maddens 
at  your  name,  because  she  finds  nothing  to  reproach  you  with ;  and  the  venal 
hirelings  of  the  ministry  despair  of  meriting  their  pay  by  blackening  your 
character.  Illiberal  abuse  and  gross  inconsistencies  and  absurdities  recoU  upon 
their  author ;  and  only  bear  testimony  of  the  weakness  of  his  head  or  the  bad- 
ness of  his  heart.  That  raan  whose  enemies  can  find  nothing  to  lay  to  his 
charge,  may  well  dispense  with  the  incoherent  Billingsgate  of  a  ministerial 
writer." 

This  paper,  we  say,  he  intended  for  the  Political  Register. 
But,  either  before  getting  it  accepted  there,  or  while  it  was 
still  only  in  type,  he  sent  a  copy  of  it  direct  to  Beckford.    He 


r 


A  STORY  OF  THE  YEAR   1770.  279 


gives  his  Lordship  a  day  or  so  to  read  it ;  and  then  ventures 
on  that  personal  call  to  which  he  makes  allusion  in  his  letter 
to  his  sister  of  May  the  30th.  His  Lordship,  according  to  his 
own  account, — and  we  see  no  reason  to  doubt  it, — receives  him 
very  politely ;  and  not  only  expresses  his  approbation  of  what 
he  had  already  written,  but  consents  to  have  a  second  letter,  on 
the  subject  of  the  City  Remonstrance  and  its  reception  by  the 
King,  publicly  addressed  to  him.  This  call  on  Beckford  pro- 
bably took  place  about  the  26th  of  May,  or  three  days  after  the 
great  affair  of  the  Remonstrance,  and  when  the  town  was  still 
ringing  with  it.  At  all  events,  a  letter  bearing  that  date,  and 
addressed  to  the  Lord  Mayor,  was  found  in  manuscript  among 
Chatterton's  papers  after  his  death.  This  letter,  beginning 
"  When  the  endeavours  of  a  spirited  people  to  free  themselves 
from  an  unsupportable  slavery ,''  &c.,  was  almost  certainly  the 
letter  he  asked  leave  to  address  to  Beckford ;  and  it  shows 
how  completely  he  had  succeeded  in  his  object  that  he  was 
able  to  make  arrangements  for  its  appearing  in  no  less  im- 
portant a  periodical  than  the  North  Briton.  This  paper — 
a  continuation  of  Wilkes's  celebrated  periodical  of  the  same 
name,  which  had  been  stopped  in  its  46th  number — differed 
considerably  from  the  ordinary  newspapers  of  the  day.  It 
was  of  small  folio  size,  and  each  number  usually  consisted  of 
one  careful  essay,  and  no  more,  occupying  about  six  pages 
of  clear  and  elegant  type,  and  sold  for  twopence -halfpenny. 
The  editor  and  proprietor  was  a  person  named  William 
Bingley,  a  printer,  whose  case  was  then  much  before  the 
public.  In  1768  he  had,  as  a  speculation,  resumed  the  publi- 
cation of  the  North  Briton^  after  it  had  been  discontinued  for 
some  years.  In  that  year,  however,  having  been  summoned 
as  a  witness  in  one  of  the  trials  between  Wilkes  and  the 
Government,  he  had  given  a  singular  proof  of  his  obstinacy 
by  making  oath  in  Court  that  he  would  answer  no  interroga- 
tories whatever  unless  he  should  be  put  to  the  torture.  (See 
Junius,  Letter  VII.)  Committed  for  contempt  to  the  King's 
Bench,  he  remained  there  utterly  immovable  either  by  threats 
or  by  promises  for  a  period  of  two  years,  publishing  his  North 
Briton  all  the  same,  and  dating  it  from  his  prison ;  till,  at  last, 


280  CHATTEKTON  : 

in  the  first  week  of  June  1770,  Government  thouglit  It  best 
to  let  him  out.  As  soon  as  he  was  released,  he  started  a 
second  weekly  newspaper,  called  Bingleys  Journal,  or  the 
Universal  Gazetteer,  of  the  regular  newspaper  size  and  form  ; 
the  first  number  of  which  appeared  on  the  9th  of  June.  This 
paper  was  not  to  interfere  with  the  North  Briton ;  both  were 
to  be  issued  every  Saturday,  at  the  same  price,  from  Bingley's 
new  premises  at  the  Britannia,  No.  31,  Newgate  Street.  A 
connexion  with  Bingiey,  therefore,  must  have  been  thought 
of  some  importance  by  Chatterton;  and  it  is  another  proof 
of  his  energy  that,  before  Bingiey  was  out  of  prison  a  fort- 
night, he  had  contrived  to  obtain  such  a  connexion.  Above 
all,  to  have  his  letter  to  Beckford  brought  out  in  large  fine 
type  in  the  North  Briton,  forming  by  itself  one  entire  number 
of  that  famous  paper,  must  have  seemed  to  Chatterton  a 
decided  step  of  literary  promotion. 

The  elation  which  Chatterton  must  naturally  have  felt  at 
the  idea  of  the  publication  simultaneously  of  two  letters  of 
his  to  the  Lord  Mayor  in  such  important  places  as  the  Political 
Register  and  the  North  Briton,  and  at  the  prospects  of  farther 
recognition  which  would  thus  be  opened  up  to  him,  was 
doomed  to  a  bitter  disappointment.  After  May  he  seems  to 
have  written  next  to  nothing  of  a  political  character  for  the 
Middlesex,  but  to  have  waited  for  his  letters  and  the  Sclat  he 
anticipated  from  them.  One  of  them  did  appear — that  written 
first  and  sent  to  the  Political  Register,  It  was  published  in 
that  periodical  in  the  course  of  June,  and  bore  the  signature  of 
*'  Probus.^^  But  before  the  other  could  appear,  an  event  hap- 
pened which  made  it  impossible  that  it  should  appear  at  all. 
On  the  21st  of  June,  1770,  almost  exactly  a  month  after  that 
crowning  moment  of  his  life,  the  presentation  of  the  City 
Remonstrance,  and  when  all  London,  Chatterton  included, 
were  expecting  no  end  of  similar  manifestations  of  his  spirit, 
Beckford  died.  His  death  was  sudden — the  consequence  of 
a  cold,  which  an  imprudent  journey  of  100  miles,  while  it  was 
upon  him,  had  aggravated  into  a  rheumatic  fever.  The  town 
was  thunderstruck ;  and  for  some  days  nothing  else  was  talked 
of.     Soon,  however,  the  excitement  died  away;   Beckford's 


A  STORY   OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  281 

only  legitimate  son,  then  a  boy  of  nine  years,  afterwards  to  be 
known  far  and  wide  as  the  author  of  "  Vathek,"  stepped  into 
the  inheritance  of  his  father's  vast  fortune,  the  wife  being 
amply  provided  for  by  her  settlement,  and  several  illegitimate 
children  at  the  same  time  receiving  5,000/.  each ;  and  the 
City  people  began  to  think  which  of  the  popular  aldermen 
they  should  elect  for  the  vacant  term  of  the  Mayoralty. 

And  what  of  poor  Chatterton,  to  whom,  with  his  two  letters, 
and  the  hopes  he  had  built  upon  them,  an  insurance  on  Beck- 
ford's  life  was  more  necessary  than  to  all  the  City  besides  ? 
"  When  Beckford  died,"  Mrs.  Ballance  told  Sir  Herbert  Croft, 
"  he  (Chatterton)  was  perfectly  frantic  and  out  of  his  mind,  and 
said  that  he  was  ruined."  This  is  probably  correct ;  and  yet 
there  is  an  authentic  little  record,  from  which  it  would  appear 
that,  after  his  first  frantic  regret  was  over,  he  tried  to  console 
himself  ironically  in  a  rather  singular  fashion.  On  the  back 
of  the  identical  letter,  alluded  to  above,  as  having  been  sent 
to  the  North  Briton,  but  which,  as  it  could  not  now  appear 
there,  Chatterton  had  recovered  and  sent  in  manuscript  to  his 
friend  Cary,  there  is  an  endorsement  in  Chatterton's  hand, 
evidently  for  Cary's  information,  as  follows : — 

"  Accepted  by  Bingley. — Set  for,  and  thrown  out  of,  the  North  Briton^  21st 
June,  on  accovint  of  the  Lord  Mayor's  death 

£    s.     d. 

Lost  by  his  death  on  this  Essay 1116 

Gained  in  Elegies £2     2     0 

in  Essays £3     3     0 

5     5     0 

Am  glad  he  is  dead  by  ...    , £3  13     6  " 

So  far  as  we  are  aware,  this  is  the  first  time  that  grief  was 
estimated  in  pounds,  shillings,  and  pence ;  but  we  need  not 
say  that  the  method  has  some  merits,  and  might,  without 
much  injury  to  truth,  come  into  general  use ! 

Beckford's  death  seems,  however,  to  have  had  one  not 
unimportant  effect  on  Chatterton's  literary  exertions.  Even 
before  his  interview  with  Beckford,  as  his  letter  to  his  sister 
of  the  30th  of  May  shows  us,  he  had  begun  to  have  doubts  as 
to  the  advantages  of  mere  political  writing — at  any  rate,  of 
political  writing  on  the  Opposition  side  and  for  the  news- 


282  CHATTERTON  : 

papers.  For  essays  of  this  kind,  he  says,  one  was  certainly 
sure  of  pay ;  but  the,  benefit  ended  there !  The  "  patriots  "  being 
all  in  search  of  place  for  themselves,  there  was  little  chance 
of  any  farther  remuneration  for  articles  on  their  side  than  the 
publisher's  payment  for  the  copy !  On  the  other  hand,  if  one 
wrote  for  the  Ministerial  side,  no  publisher  would  take  the 
articles,  and  one  must  pay  to  have  them  printed ;  but  then  if 
one  could  make  a  hit,  the  Ministerial  men  would  be  glad  of 
such  a  recruit,  and  could  easily  make  it  worth  his  while  to 
serve  them !  And  then  follows  the  maxim,  so  characteristic 
of  the  miserable  boy,  "  He  is  a  poor  author  who  cannot  write 
on  both  sides  ; "  and  the  statement  that,  if  necessary,  he  will 
put  this  maxim  in  practice,  by  transferring  himself  to  the 
Court-party.  There  is  evidence  that  he  actually  made  an 
attempt  to  carry  the  intention  into  efiect.  On  that  very  26th 
of  May,  on  which  he  penned  the  letter  to  the  Lord  Mayor, 
which  was  to  appear  in  the  North  Briton^  lauding  him  and 
the  patriots  for  their  opposition  to  ]\Iinisters,  he  penned  also 
another  letter — afterwards  found  among  his  papers — addressed 
to  Lord  North,  and  signed  "  Moderator,^'  in  which,  according 
to  Walpole,  he  passes  "  an  encomium  on  Ministers  for  rejecting 
the  City  Remonstrance."  It  was  probably,  therefore,  the 
consciousness  of  having  written  these  two  letters  on  the  same 
day  that  caused  him  to  write  to  his  sister  so  coolly  about 
taking  either  side ;  and  what  he  says  about  the  difficulty  of 
getting  Ministerial  essays  published  may  have  been  but  the 
result  of  his  own  experience  with  regard  to  the  "  Moderator  ^' 
letter.  Evidently,  however,  after  his  introduction  of  himself 
to  Beckford,  he  had  resolved  to  wait  the  issue  of  that  experi- 
ment before  taking  any  farther  steps  towards  the  Ministerial 
side.  But  when  Beckford  died,  and  all  his  hopes  from  that 
acquaintance  were  over,  his  conviction  of  the  uselessness  of 
mere  political  writing  in  newspapers,  especially  if  on  the 
patriotic  side,  came  back  with  fresh  force. 

There  was  independent  reason  why  it  should  do  so.  Since 
the  end  of  May  there  had  been  a  perfect  panic  among  the  news- 
paper-proprietors. As  early  as  the  beginning  of  that  month,  we 
have  seen,  Edmunds  of  the  Middlesex  Journal  had  been  pro- 


A  STORY  OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  283 

secuted  "by  Ministers  and  committed  to  Newgate.  And  this 
was  but  the  beginning  of  a  series  of  similar  prosecutions. 
After  the  City  Eemonstrance  of  the  23d  of  May,  and  Junius's 
terrible  letter  in  the  Public  Advertiser  of  the  28th,  ripping  up 
the  conduct  of  the  Parliament  just  prorogued,  and  lashing 
Ministers  for  all  their  recent  misdemeanours,  including  the 
massacre  at  Boston,  the  insult  to  the  City,  and  the  escape  of 
the  murderer  Kennedy,  Ministers  seem  to  have  made  up  their 
minds  for  a  crusade  against  the  Opposition  press.  On  the  1st 
of  June,  Mr.  Almon  of  the  London  Museum,  the  friend  of 
Wilkes,  was  tried  in  Westminster  Hall  before  Lord  Mansfield, 
for  selling  a  letter  of  Junius's  in  that  publication ;  on  the  13th, 
the  greater  culprit,  Woodfall  of  the  Advertiser,  was  tried  at  the 
King's  Bench  on  a  similar  charge ;  and  on  the  13th  of  July, 
Mr.  Miller,  of  the  London  Evening  Post,  was  tried  for  copying 
a  letter  of  Junius  into  his  columns.  All  this  had  some  effect. 
The  proprietors  of  newspapers  began  to  be  chary  of  printing 
articles  which  might  be  their  ruin.  Thus,  during  the  month 
of  June,  Chatterton  seems  to  have  found  it  impossible  to  get 
such  articles  into  the  Middlesex  Journal  as  they  had  willingly 
taken  from  him  in  May.  *'  The  printers  of  daily  publications," 
he  writes  to  Cary  on  the  29th  of  June,  "  are  all  frightened  out 
of  their  patriotism,  and  will  take  nothing  unless  'tis  moderate 
or  Ministerial.  I  have  not  had  five  patriotic  essays  this  fort- 
night :  all  must  be  Ministerial  or  entertaining.'^  Accordingly, 
still  keeping  in  reserve  the  possibility  of  becoming  "  Minis- 
terial'^  if  he  should  see  occasion  for  it,  he  in  the  meantime 
falls  back  on  the  " entertain ing;''  that  is,  on  miscellaneous  non- 
political  literature.  And  this  leads  us  to  our  next  topic — an 
account  of  Chatterton' s  literary  exertions  out  of  the  field  of 
politics  during  his  first  two  months  in  London. 

From  the  very  first,  he  had  by  no  means  depended  exclu- 
sively on  political  writing.  In  his  letter  to  his  mother  of 
the  6th  of  May  he  says,  ''  I  get  four  guineas  a  month  by 
one  magazine,  and  shall  engage  to  write  a  History  of 
England  and  other  pieces,  which  will  more  than  double  that 
sum ;"  and  he  clearly  distinguishes  between  employment  of 
this   kind   and   "  occasio^al   essays   for  the   daily   papers." 


284  CHATTERTON : 

Again,  in  his  letter  to  liis  sister  of  May  30th,  he  speaks  of  an 
engagement  with  a  speculative  bookseller,  the  brother  of  a 
Scotch  lord,  who  was  to  give  him  board  and  lodging  for 
writing  a  History  of  London,  to  appear  in  numbers.  How 
much  of  these  statements  about  engagements  to  write  large 
historical  compilations  for  the  booksellers  was  actual  fact, 
founded  on  proposals  which  passed  between  the  eager  youth 
and  the  bibliopolic  powers  of  Paternoster  Row  and  its  purlieus, 
and  how  much  of  it  was  mere  hallucination,  we  cannot  now 
say.  Of  schemes  of  this  sort,  at  all  events  we  hear  nothing 
more;  and  whatever  chances  of  literary  work,  as  distinct 
from  ordinary  newspaper- writing,  Chatterton  did  have  in  Lon- 
don, were  limited  to  his  connexions  with  various  magazines. 

We  are  able  to  enumerate  all  the  magazines  with  which, 
during  the  months  of  May  and  June,  Chatterton  is  known  to 
have  had  any  dealings.  First,  and  by  far  the  most  hopeful 
as  regarded  receipts  for  his  exchequer,  was  the  Town  and 
Country,  to  which  he  had  been  a  pretty  constant  contributor, 
since  its  second  number  in  February  1769.  This  magazine, 
which  had  a  very  large  sale,  was  published  on  the  last  day  of 
every  month  at  the  price  of  one  shilling;  and  though  the 
editor  and  proprietor,  Hamilton,  must  have  been  rather  sur- 
prised when  his  well-known  Bristol  correspondent  presented 
himself  at  his  office,  at  St.  John^s  Gate,  Clerkenwell,  to  find 
him  so  young,  he  appears  to  have  behaved  civilly,  and  to 
have  allowed  Chatterton  to  regard  the  magazine  as  one  of  his 
surest  resources  now  that  he  had  settled  in  town.  Next,  there 
was  the  Freeholder  s  Magaziney  somewhat  more  political  in  its 
character,  and  also  published  on  the  last  day  of  each  month, 
price  sixpence.  With  this  also  Chatterton  had  had  some 
acquaintance  before  leaving  Bristol ;  and  we  have  seen  that, 
during  his  first  ten  days  in  London,  he  was  disposed  to 
regard  it  and  its  editor,  Mr.  Fell,  as  his  mainstay.  After 
Fell's  imprisonment,  however,  when  the  magazine  went  into 
other  hands — the  hands,  as  we  find  from  an  advertisement  of 
the  ninth  number  (that  for  May  1770),  of  a  certain  "  patriotic 
society,"  who  employed  W.  Adland  and  J.  Browne  of  Red- 
lion  Court,  Fleet  Street,  to  print  it  for  them — Chatterton  says 


STOEY    OF  THE  YEAR   1770.  285 

little  of  it.  He  did  apparently  write  for  it ;  but  not  mucli. 
Of  greater  consequence  in  his  eyes  was  the  London  Museum, 
a  shilling  monthly,  printed,  as  we  have  said,  by  J.  Miller,  of 
Queen's  Head  Passage,  and  which,  in  May  1770,  had  attained 
to  its  fifth  number.  Next  was  the  Political  Register^  already 
described.  After  it,  may  be  mentioned  The  Court  and  City 
Magazine,  price  sixpence,  six  numbers  old  in  May  1770, 
printed  by  J.  Smith  of  15,  Paternoster  Kow,  and  characterised 
in  the  advertisements  as  "  A  Fund  of  Entertainment  for  the 
man  of  quality,  the  citizen,  the  scholar,  the  country  gentle- 
man, and  the  man  of  gallantry,  as  well  as  the  fair  of  every 
denomination."  This  magazine  had  plates,  as  indeed  most  of 
the  others  had;  and  from  the  advertised  contents  of  one  or 
two  numbers,  we  judge  that  the  light  amatory  vein  was 
deemed  the  most  attractive  by  the  publishers.  Lastly,  there 
was  the  Gospel  Magazine,  begun,  as  we  find,  in  1768,  and 
printed  and  sold,  in  1770,  by  M.  Lewis  of  No.  1,  Paternoster 
Row.  This  magazine,  the  purpose  of  which,  as  stated  on  its 
title-page,  was  "  to  promote  Religion,  Devotion  and  Piety 
from  evangelical  principles,''  usually  consisted,  if  we  may 
judge  from  the  contents  of  a  few  numbers,  of  scraps  of 
sermons  and  short  religious  biographies  and  the  like,  followed 
by  a  few  pieces  of  religious  verse. 

The  editors  of  Chatterton's  Remains,  after  his  death,  were 
not  so  careful  as  they  might  have  been  in  recovering  his  con- 
tributions to  the  various  London  Magazines,  or  even  in  giving 
the  exact  dates  and  references  of  those  which  they  did  recover. 
The  task,  in  any  case,  was  not  an  easy  one.  Chatterton 
adopted  various  signatures,  and  some  of  his  contributions  may 
have  appeared,  as  was  then  common,  without  any  signature 
at  all.  It  is  possible,  therefore,  that  trifles  which  have  been 
assumed  as  his  were  not  really  his ;  and  it  is  far  more  possible 
that  trifles  which  he  did  write  have  been  neglected.  On  the 
whole,  after  such  references  as  we  have  been  able  to  make  to 
the  old  periodicals  themselves,  we  give  the  following  as  the  list 
of  at  least  the  chief  of  Chatterton's  known  contributions  to 
these  periodicals  (the  poetical  columns  of  newspapers  included) 
from  his  arrival  in  London  to  the  end  of  June ;— 


286  CHATTERTON  : 

"  Narva  and  Mored,  an  African  Eclogue,"  in  verse,  dated  May  2,  1770 : 
appeared  in  the  Londmi,  Museum  for  May, 

"A  Song,"  addressed  to  Misa  C am,  of  Bristol,  in  seven  stanzas,  dated 

"  London,  May  4." 

'*  Tlie  Methodist ;"  a  short  Hudibrastic  squib ;  dated  May,  1770. 

"  Elegy,"  beginning  "  Why  blooms,"  &c. ;  dated  '*  Shoreditch,  May  20,"  and 
published  in  the  Town  and  Country  Magazine  for  May. 

"  The  Prophecy ; "  a  political  poem,  in  eighteen  stanzas,  published  in  the 
Middlesex  Jou/rnal  of  May  31,  along  with  the  "  Letter  to  the  Freeholders 
of  Bristol." 

"  The  Death  of  Nlcou,  an  African  Eclogue,"  in  verse;  dated  "Brooke  Street, 
June  12,"  and  published  in  the  London  Museum  for  June.  [This  is  the 
piece  to  which  we  have  alluded  as  proving  Chatterton's  removal  to  Brooke 
Street  early  in  June.] 

*' Maria  Friendless ; "  a  short  tale  in  prose,  dated  "  June  15,"  and  published  in 
the  Town  and  Country  Magazine  for  June. 

"  The  False  Step ; "  a  short  prose  tale,  published  in  the  same  number  of  the 
Town  and  Country  Magazine. 

"Anecdote  of  Judge  Jeffries;"  a  short  paragraph,  published  in  the  same 
number  of  the  Toion  and  Country  Magazine. 

**0n  Punning,"  a  short  letter,  dated  "June  16,"  and  published  in  the  same 
number  of  the  Town  and  Country  Magazine. 

A  Paper  signed  "  Hunter  of  Oddities,"  dated  "  Slaughter's  Coffee-house,  Jime 
15,"  and  describing  the  conduct  of  a  mad  gentleman  seen  there ;  published 
in  the  same  number  of  the  Town  and  Country  Magazine.  [This  was  the 
fourth  of  a  series  of  papers,  all  bearing  the  same  signature,  and  having 
the  same  object — namely,  the  description  of  odd  chai'acters  picked  up  in 
walking  about  London.  There  are  about  twelve  papers  in  all  in  the 
series,  extending  over  all  the  numbers  of  the  magazine  for  1770. 
Chatterton  was  certainly  the  author  of  some  of  them  ;  and  though  the 
rest  were  published  after  his  death,  and  even  dated  after  it,  this  may 
have  been  only  the  Editor's  way  of  using  copy  which  Chatterton  had  given 
him  in  a  lump.] 

'  Elegy  on  W.  Beckford,  Esq.,"  in  12  stanzas,  published  in  June. 

*  Letter  to  the  Lord  Mayor,"  signed  "  Probus,"  published  in  the  Political 
Register,  some  time  in  June. 

We  believe  that,  if  this  list  were  extended  by  the  addition 
of  scraps  from  the  same  periodicals  which  look  as  if  they  were 
Chatterton's,  and  of  similar  scraps  from  the  Court  and  City 
Magazine^  the  Gospel  Magazine^  and  the  Freeholder,  it  might 
be  more  than  doubled.  We  know,  for  example,  that  Chatter- 
ton must  have  written  more  on  Beckford's  death,  both  in  verse 
and  in  prose,  than  the  elegy  above-mentioned  could  amount 
to.  He  estimated  his  earnings  on  this  topic  at  five  guineas. 
Indeed,  it  was  in  connexion  with  this  topic  that  he  made  the 
only  venture  towards  independent  publication  of  which  there 
is  any  record.  In  the  Middlesex  Journal  of  July  3rd,  there  is 
the  following  advertisement :  "  This  day  was  published,  price 
one  shilling,  an  Elegy  on  the  much-lamented  death  of  William 
Beckford,  Esq.,  late  Lord  Mayor  of,  and  Kepresentative  in 


A  STORY   OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  287 

Parliament  for,  tlie  City  of  London  :  Printed  by  G.  Kearsly, 
at  No.  1,  Lndgate  Street."  A  copy  of  this  publication  has 
survived,  and,  on  comparing  it  with  the  Elegy  of  Chatterton 
mentioned  above,  it  is  found  to  be  the  same,  with  sixteen 
additional  stanzas.     Here  are  the  opening  stanzas  : — 

*'  Weep  on,  ye  Britons  !  give  your  gen'ral  tear ; 
But  hence,  ye  venal — hence  each  titled  slave ; 
An  honest  pang  should  wait  on  Beckford's  bier, 
And  patriot  Anguish  mark  the  patriot's  grave. 

"  When  like  the  Eoman  to  his  field  retired, 

'Twas  you  (surrounded  by  unnumber'd  foes) 
Who  call'd  him  forth,  his  services  required, 
And  took  from  Age  the  blessing  of  repose." 

Whether  Chatterton  gained  any  part  of  his  five  guineas  by  this 
publication,  or  whether  he  lost  some  of  them  by  the  venture, 
we  do  not  know.  The  Elegy  is  as  good  as  was  going,  but  is 
poor  enough,  and  perhaps  did  not  sell. 

But  we  have  not  yet  taken  account  of  all  Chatterton's 
efforts  to  make  money  and  win  fame,  during  his  first  two 
months  in  London.  Besides  writing  political  articles  for  the 
newspapers,  and  miscellaneous  scraps  of  a  more  literary  kind 
for  the  magazines,  he  made,  as  we  gather  from  his  letters,  a 
distinct  effort  towards  connecting  himself  with  what  may  be 
called  generally  the  minor  dramatic  literature  of  the  metro- 
polis. Within  a  month  after  his  arrival  in  London,  as  we  have 
seen,  the  two  great  theatres  of  Drury  Lane  and  Co  vent  Gar- 
den were  closed  for  the  season  ;  so  that,  even  had  there  been 
any  way  of  getting  into  relations  with  the  managers  of  those 
theatres,  there  was  no  time  to  turn  it  to  immediate  use. 
But,  though  the  greater  theatres  were  shut,  one  or  two  minor 
or  summer  theatres  were  open.  Thus,  at  the  Haymarket, 
Foote  was  just  about  to  bring  out,  for  the  delight  of  the  town, 
his  comedy  of  the  "  Lame  Lover  ;'^  perhaps  the  greatest 
theatrical  hit  of  that  year.  Sadler's  Wells  was  also  in  its 
glory.  But  whatever  dreams  of  future  work  for  those  places 
may  have  passed  across  Chatterton's  mind,  there  was  as  yet 
no  means  of  realizing  them ;  and  all  that  his  ambition  did 
conceive  as  within  its  reach,  for  the  present,  was  the  chance  of 
becoming  connected  with  one  or  other  of  those  places  of 


288  CHATTERTON  : 

evening  musical  and  pyroteclinic  entertainment  which  com- 
peted with  the  minor  theatres  for  the  right  to  entertain  the 
more  dissipated  Londoners  during  the  summer  and  autumn 
months.  Of  these  there  were  three  of  some  note — Kanelagh 
Gardens,  at  Chelsea ;  Vauxhall  Gardens  on  the  Surrey  side  of 
the  Thames,  over  against  Millbank  ;  and  Marylebone  or  Mary- 
bone  Gardens,  on  the  site  of  part  of  the  present  New  Road. 
At  all  these  places,  the  entertainments  consisted  of  prome- 
nading under  brilliant  lights,  hearing  concerts  of  music, 
sipping  tea  and  coffee  or  more  expensive  beverages,  and 
seeing,  at  the  close,  grand  displays  of  fireworks.  Any  hope 
that  Chatterton  could  entertain  of  contributing  to  the  pro- 
vision involved  in  such  a  bill  of  fare,  could  obviously  consist 
only  in  his  ability  to  furnish  words  for  the  musical  portion  of 
it.  It  did  so  happen  that  he  had  an  opportunity  of  making  his 
ability  in  this  respect  known,  and  that  this  opportunity  was 
more  especially  in  connexion  with  Marylebone  Gardens.  We 
see  no  reason  to  doubt  the  literal  accuracy  of  his  account  to 
his  mother  on  the  14th  of  May,  of  the  accidental  manner  in 
which  the  connexion  was  brought  about.  "  Last  week,"  he 
says,  "  being  in  the  pit  of  Drury  Lane  Theatre,  I  contracted  an 
immediate  acquaintance  (which  you  know  is  no  hard  task  to 
me)  with  a  young  gentleman  in  Cheapside,  partner  in  a  music- 
shop,  the  greatest  in  the  city.  Hearing  I  could  write,  he 
desired  me  to  write  a  few  songs  for  him :  this  I  did  the  same 
night,  and  conveyed  them  to  him  the  next  morning.  These 
he  showed  to  a  Doctor  in  music,  and  I  am  invited  to  treat 
with  the  Doctor  on  the  footing  of  a  composer  for  Ranelagh- 
and  the  Gardens."  For  a  while  we  hear  no  more  of  this 
bargain  or  its  results ;  but,  in  the  end  of  June,  writing  to 
Gary,  who  had  apparently  been  already  informed  of  all  the 
particulars,  he  reports  progress.  ''  A  song  of  mine,"  he  then 
says,  "  is  a  great  favourite  with  the  town,  on  account  of  the 
fulness  of  the  music.  You  will  see  that  and  twenty  more  in 
print  after  the  season  is  over.  I  yesterday  heard  several 
airs  of  my  burletta  sung  to  the  harpsichord,  horns,  bassoons, 
hautboys,  violins,  &c.,  and  will  venture  to  pronounce,  from 
the  excellence  of  the  music,  that  it  will  take  with  the  town." 


A   STORY   OF   THE   YEAR   1770.  289 

If  we  interpret  this  into  the  language  of  direct  statement,  the 
facts  seem  to  be — that  having,  early  in  May,  written  some 
songs  for  some  musip-publisher  who  had  an  interest  in  Mary- 
bone  Gardens,  one  or  two  of  these  had  already  been  set  to  music, 
and  perhaps  sung  at  the  Gardens,  in  the  course  of  one  of  the 
concerts,  by  Mr.  Eeinhold,  Mr.  Bannister,  or  Mrs.  Barthelemon, 
who  were  then  the  Mary  bone  stars ;  and  that,  these  having 
pleased,  he  had  made  some  kind  of  arrangement  for  a  more 
extensive  attempt,  in  the  shape  of  a  continuous  burletta  to  be 
brought  out  at  the  Gardens,  as  soon  as  might  be  convenient, — 
had  already  before  the  end  of  June  finished  this  burletta  and 
handed  it  over  to  the  composer,  and  had  even  had  the  pleasure 
of  hearing  some  of  the  airs  of  it  in  rehearsal. 

All  this  is  corroborated  by  the  evidence  of  Chatterton's 
remaining  writings.  For  some  five-and-twenty  years,  indeed, 
after  his  death,  all  traces  of  either  his  burletta  or  his  songs 
seem  to  have  been  lost;  but  in  1795,  a  Mr.  Atterbury,  who 
somehow  came  into  possession  of  the  manuscripts,  published 
both  together  in  the  form  of  a  neat  little  pamphlet,  having 
this  title-page,  "  The  Revenge :  A  Burletta,  acted  at  Maryhone 
Gardens  1770/  with  additional  songs  ;  hy  Thomas  Chatterton.'' 
Prefixed  to  *'  Tlie  Revenge,^"*  there  is  this  list  of  dramatis 
person(S. 

Jupiter Mb.  Eeinhold. 

Bacchus Mr.  Bannister. 

Cupid Master  Cheney. 

Juno Mrs.  Thompson. 

The  natural  inference  is,  that  the  Burletta  was  actually 
performed  at  the  Gardens.  After  looking  over  the  news- 
papers for  1770,  however,  in  which  there  is  a  pretty  complete 
series  of  advertisements  of  the  entertainments  at  the  Gardens 
from  the  beginning  to  the  end  of  the  season,  we  have  found 
no  trace  of  any  such  burletta  having  been  produced  that  year; 
and  we  rather  incline  to  think  that,  if  the  production  took 
place  at  all,  it  was  not  till  a  subsequent  season.  Of  ^yq  short 
songs,  however,  printed  along  with  the  burletta,  it  seems 
likely  enough  that  one,  entitled  A  Bacchanalian,  and  purport- 
ing to  have  been  ''  sung  by  Mr.  Eeinhold,"  was  actually  sung 

u 


290  CHATTERTON ! 

by  that  gentleman  at  one  of  the  mixed  concerts ;  and  it  may 
be  the  very  song  respecting  which  Chatterton  wrote  to  Gary. 
Another  of  the  five,  entitled  The  Invitation fh.3is  attached  to  it  the 
words,  "  To  be  sung  by  Mrs.  Barthelemon  and  Master  Cheney ;" 
as  if  it  had  not  yet  gone  so  far  as  the  other.  The  remaining 
three  have  no  singer's  name  attached  to  them.  Probably, 
however,  to  have  had  one  song  actually  sung  at  the  Gardens, 
another  about  to  be  sung,  and  a  burletta  in  progress,  seemed 
to  Chatterton  sufficient  success.  At  all  events,  no  sooner  was 
one  burletta  off  his  hands,  than  he  began  another  of  a  more 
modern  dramatic  character,  entitled  The  Woman  of  Spirit,  the 
several  parts  of  which  are  distributed  by  anticipation  thus : — 

Distort    .....  Mr.  Bannister. 

Councillor'  Latitat     .  Mr.  Reinhold. 

Endorse Master  Cheney. 

Lady  Tempest      .    .  Mrs.  Thompson. 

Of  this  intended  burletta  only  two  scenes  were  written. 

No  one  can  read  these  dramatic  attempts  of  the  industrious 
boy  without  a  new  impression  of  his  extraordinary  cleverness 
and  versatility.  The  Revenge,  which  is  in  two  acts,  and  is 
written  in  rhyme  throughout,  partly  in  passages  of  reci- 
tative, but  with  numerous  solo  airs,  one  or  two  duets,  and 
a  chorus  at  the  close,  might  really,  if  set  to  tolerable 
music,  have  been  a  pleasant  piece  to  hear.  The  words 
are  decidedly  better  than  those  of  many  of  the  musical 
burlesques  which  succeed  now-a-days.  The  story  is  that  of  a 
quarrel  between  Jupiter  and  Juno,  on  account  of  an  assigna- 
tion which  Jupiter  has  made  with  Maia  ;  the  plot  is  thickened 
by  the  introduction  of  Cupid  and  Bacchus ;  and,  after  the 
usual  amount  of  confusion  and  cross-purpose,  all  ends  happily. 
Here  is  a  specimen — a  dispute  between  Bacchus  and  Cupid 
respecting  the  comparative  worth  of  their  respective  functions. 

Bacchus  (with  a  bowl). 

Recitative. — Od'sniggers,  t'other  draught ;  'tis  dev'lish  heady  ; 

Olympus  turns  about  {staggers) ;  steady,  boys,  steady  I 

Air. — If  Jove  should  pretend  that  he  governs  the  skies, 
I  swear  by  this  liquor  his  Thundership  lies ; 
A  slave  to  his  bottle,  he  governs  by  wine ; 
And  all  must  confess  he's  a  servant  of  mine. 


A  STORY*  OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  291 

Air  chcmges. — Rosy,  sparkling,  powerful  wine, 
All  the  joys  of  life  are  thine  ; 
Search  the  drinking  world  around 
Bacchus  everywhere  sits  crown'd. ' 
Whilst  we  lift  the  flowing  bowl 
Unregarded  thunders  roll. 

Air  changes. — Since  man,  as  says  each  bearded  sage, 
Is  but  a  piece  of  clay, 
Whose  mystic  moisture  lost  by  age, 
To  dust  it  falls  away, 
'Tis  orthodox,  beyond  a  doubt. 
That  drought  will  only  fret  it  ; 
To  make  the  brittle  stuff  hold  out 
Is  thus  to  drink  and  wet  it. 

Recitative. — Ah  !  Master  Cupid,  'slife,  I  did  not  s'  ye  ; 

'Tis  excellent  champagne,  and  so  here's  t'  ye  : 
I  brought  it  to  these  gardens  as  imported  ; 
'Tis  bloody  strong ;  you  need  not  twice  be  courted ; 
Come,  drink,  my  boy 

Cupid. 

Hence,  monster,  hence  !     I  scorn  thy  flowing  bowl : 
It  prostitutes  the  sense,  degenerates  the  soul. 

Bacchus. 

Gadso,  methinks  the  youngster's  woundy  moral! 
He  plays  with  ethics  like  a  bell  and  coraL 
Air. — 'Tis  madness  to  think. 
To  judge  ere  you  drink  : 
The  bottom  all  wisdom  contains. 
Then  let  you  and  I 
Now  drink  the  bowl  dry  ; 
We  both  shall  grow  wise  for  our  pains. 

Cupid. 

Red  tative. — Pray,  keep  your  distance,  beast,  and  cease  your  bawling. 
Or  with  this  dart  I'll  send  you  caterwauling. 
Air. — The  charms  of  wine  cannot  compare 
W^ith  the  soft  raptures  of  the  fair  ; 
Can  drunken  pleasures  ever  find 
A  place  with  love  and  womankind  ? 
Can  the  full  bowl  pretend  to  vie 
With  the  soft  languish  of  the  eye  ? 
Can  the  mad  roar  our  passions  move 
Like  gentle  breathing  sighs  of  Love  ? 

Bacchus. 
Go,  whine  and  complain 
To  the  girls  of  the  plain. 
And  sigh  out  your  soul  ere  she  comes  to  the  mind ; 
My  mistress  is  here, 
And,  faith,  I  don't  fear, 
/  always  am  happy,  she  always  is  kind. 
Air  changes. — A  pox  o'  your  lasses  ! 
A  shot  of  my  glasses 
Your  arrows  surpasses ; 
For  nothing  but  asses 

Will  draw  in  your  team. 

u2 


292  CHATTERTON : 

Whilst  thus  I  am  drinking, 
My  misery  sinking, 
The  cannikin  clinking, 
I'm  lost  to  all  thinking, 
And  care  is  a  dream. 

Cupid. 

Provoking  insolence !  &c. 

One  would  like  to  know,  if  possible,  the  exact  pecuniary 
result  for  Chatterton  of  all  those  various  exertions  of  his 
during  his  first  two  busy  months  in  London — his  political 
articles  and  essays,  his  miscellaneous  poems  and  other  literary 
trifles  contributed  to  magazines,  and  his  songs  and  burletta  for 
Marybone  Gardens.  Our  only  data  for  this  calculation  are 
contained  in  two  small  documents  found  among  his  papers. 
On  one  scrap  found  in  his  pocket-book  was  the  following 
jotting — an  account,  as  it  would  seem,  of  his  earnings  up  to 
the  23rd  of  May  :— 

£   s.  d. 

"  Received  to  May  23,  of  Mr.  Hamilton,  for  ilficZcZZesea;      .    .  1  11  6 

ofB 12  3 

„  „  of  Fell  for  the  Tlie  ConsuUad  (one  of 

Chatterton's  longer  satirical  poems,  which  Fell  had 

apparently  bought  for  the  Freeholder's  Magazine)  0  10  6 

„  „  of  Mr.  Hamilton  for  "  Candidus"  and 

"  Foreign  Journal "  (paragraphs,  it  seems,  for  the 

Middlesex  or  the  Toivn  and  Country) 0     2  0 

of  Mr.  Fell 0  10  6 

„  „  Middlesex  Jov/mal 0     8  6 

„  „  Mr.  Hamilton,  for  16  songs  .     .    .    .  0  10  6 

£4:  15    9" 

This,  probably,  carries  his  earnings  on  to  the  end  of  May.  The 
other  document  referred  to,  is  that  already  quoted,  giving  an 
ironical  account  of  the  balance  in  his  favour  by  Beckford's 
death,  which  is  estimated  at  3/.  135.  6d,  This,  of  course, 
was  but  one  item  in  his  receipts  for  June,  though  probably, 
from  the  nature  of  the  topic,  the  most  important  item.  On 
the  whole,  remembering  that  during  this  month  his  earnings 
by  newspaper- writing  were  almost  nil;  and  also  allowing  for 
the  likelihood  (and  there  is  too  much  reason  to  fear  it  was  a 
fact)  that  some  of  his  earnings  by  the  magazines  of  that  month, 
including  even  part  of  the  elegiac  31.  ISs.  Sd.  remained  un- 
paid— we  shall  probably  be  correct  if  we  say  that  Chatterton^s 

\ 


A   STORY   OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  293 

total  receipts  during  his  first  two  montlis  in  London  cannot 
have  exceeded  10?.  or  121.  There  is  a  tradition,  indeed,  of  his 
having  received  five  guineas  for  his  "burletta,  but  we  knoTv  of 
no  foundation  for  it. 

Chatterton  was  singularly  abstemious  in  his  personal  habits. 
He  drank  only  water,  and  rarely  touched  meat.  Even  at  his 
mother's  house  in  Bristol  he  would  rarely  eat  animal  food, 
assigning  as  his  reason  that  "  he  had  work  on  hand  and  must 
not  make  himself  more  stupid  than  God  had  made  him."  His 
receipts,  therefore,  small  as  they  were,  would  probably  have 
satisfied  all  his  absolute  wants  for  a  considerable  time.  But 
there  were  other  respects  in  which  he  did  not  deny  himself. 
"  I  employ  my  money  now,"  he  writes  to  his  sister  on  the  30th 
of  May,  "  in  fitting  myself  fashionably,  and  getting  into  good 
company,"  i.e.  going  to  cofiee-houses,  the  gardens,  the  thea- 
tres, &c.  Add  to  this  little  tokens  sent  home  to  his  mother 
and  sister  ;  and  it  will  not  be  difficult  to  see  how,  before  the 
end  of  June,  even  without  supposing  any  extravagance,  the 
greater  part  of  the  ten  or  twelve  guineas  earned  may  have 
evaporated.  Still,  there  is  as  yet  no  appearance  of  despond- 
ency in  Chatterton  as  to  the  future.  What  he  had  spent  in 
dress  and  "  getting  into  good  company"  was  sure  to  bring  him 
in  interest ;  and  month  after  month  would  bring  each  its  own 
earnings  !  If  money  flowed  as  fast  as  honours  upon  him,  he 
would  give  his  sister  a  portion  of  5,000Z. !  That  day  might  be 
still  distant ;  but,  at  least,  he  could  look  forward  to  the  time 
when  his  mother  and  sister  should  leave  Bristol  and  join  him 
in  London ;  when  he  could  take  apartments  for  them  and  him- 
self; when  they  should  be,  all  three,  happy  together,  walking  out 
on  Sundays  to  Hampstead  or  Kensington;  and  when  the  heaven 
over  London  should  begin  to  glow  and  blush  with  the  burning 
beneath  it  of  that  hard-to-kindle  but  still  surely  combustible 
river,  and  the  whole  town,  his  mother  and  sister  included, 
should  gaze  at  the  crimson  air  and  see  Ms  portrait  and  the 
letters  T.  C.  freaked  in  keener  fire  in  the  heart  of  the  crimson ! 
Dream  on,  poor  boy,  for  the  end  is  not  yet ! 

It  will  have  been  observed  that  all  this  while,  in  his  cease- 
less efforts  to  become  known  in  London,  Chatterton  made  no 


294  CHATTERTON  : 

use  of  his  antiques.  Of  at  least  one  of  those  longer  modem 
satirical  pieces  which  he  had  brought  with  him  to  town  from 
Bristol — that  called  The  ConsuUad — he  had  contrived  to  make 
something  ;  but  though  he  must  have  had  his  tragedy  of  JElla 
with  him,  his  fragment  of  the  tragedy  of  Goddwyn,  his  Tour- 
nament,  his  Battle  of  Hastings,  and  others  of  his  Ho  wley  poems, 
he  seems  to  have  made  no  attempt  to  get  them  published. 
Indeed,  his  only  allusion,  after  his  arrival  in  London,  to  the 
Eowley  poems,  is  contained  in  his  saying  to  his  sister  that  if 
Eowley  had  been  a  Londoner,  instead  of  a  Bristowyan,  he 
could  have  lived  by  copying  his  works.  It  is  possible,  how- 
ever, from  his  writing  to  his  sister  for  his  MS.  glossary  of 
obsolete  terms,  that  he  may  have  had  some  scheme  in  his  head 
with  regard  to  his  antiques.  One  wonders  what  would  have 
been  the  effect  if  he  had  tried  the  London  public  with  a  bit  of 
his  ^lla,  fresh  from  his  lodging  in  Brooke  Street.  Fancy  John- 
son, Goldy,  Warton  and  the  rest  of  them  reading  it !  The 
London  antiquarians  of  that  day  may  be  supposed  to  have 
been  to  the  Bristol  ones,  in  respect  of  perspicacity,  as  hawks 
to  doves ;  but  what  a  fluttering  there  would  have  been  even 
among  the  hawks  !  Would  it  have  been  better  for  Chatterton 
had  he  made  the  attempt?  Who  can  tell?  On  the  one 
hand,  by  refraining  from  it,  he  moved  on  to  a  fate  sad  enough; 
on  the  other,  he  might  have  lived  on  a  hardened  literary  liar. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

BROOKE   STREET,   HOLBORN. 

Chatterton  had  been  in  his  new  lodging  in  Brooke  Street 
now  about  three  weeks.  During  that  time  he  had  become 
pretty  well  acquainted  with  his  landlady,  Mrs.  Angell,  and 
with  her  husband,  Frederick  Angell,  who  was  engaged  in 
some  trade  or  business  which  took  him  from  home  during  the 
day,  leaving  his  wife,  and  any  assistants  she  may  have  had, 
to  their  dress-making.  Always  of  social  habits  and  willing  to 
converse  with  those  about  him,  he  seems  now  and  then  to 
have  sat  with  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Angell  of  an  evening,  talking 


A  STORY   OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  295 

with  them  about  himself,  his  mother  and  sister,  and  even  his 
literary  plans  and  expectations.  The  impression  he  made 
on  these  people  was  verj  much  the  same  as  that  made  on  the 
Walmsleys ;  except  that  they  seem  to  have  been  somewhat 
superior  in  their  general  notions  to  the  Shoreditch  folks,  and 
more  capable  of  understanding  what  their  lodger's  occupa- 
tions were.  The  wife  said  afterwards,  "  He  was  very  proud, 
but  never  unkind  to  any  one;"  and  the  husband  ''always 
considered  him  something  wonderful,"  noticed  that  he  "  ap- 
peared to  be  very  fond  of  his  mother  and  sister,"  and  had 
"  never  seen  him  drink  anything  but  water."  Both,  however, 
regarded  him  as  decidedly  odd,  and,  latterly  at  least,  had 
misgivings  as  to  whether  he  might  not  one  day  go  out  of  his 
mind.  Very  similar  were  the  impressions  of  some  neighbours, 
who  were  acquainted  with  Mrs.  Angell,  heard  her  speak  of 
her  lodger,  and  sometimes  saw  him  in  her  house,  and  from 
their  own  windows  as  he  went  out  and  in.  Among  these  there 
was  a  Mrs.  Wolfe,  the  wife  of  a  hair-dresser  who  had  a  shop 
in  Brooke  Street,  three  doors  from  Mrs.  Angell's,  where 
brushes,  combs,  and  perfumery  were  sold.  Being  an  intimate 
acquaintance  of  Mrs.  Angell,  she  had  seen  Chatterton  often, 
and  "  always  thought  him  very  proud  and  haughty."  Some- 
times she  thought  him  "  crazed."  One  night,  as  late  as  twelve 
o'clock,  chancing  to  be  out  on  some  errand,  she  saw  him 
walking  up  and  down  the  street,  "  talking  loud  and  occasion- 
ally stopping  as  if  to  think  on  something."  In  the  same 
street,  and  apparently  between  Mrs.  Angell's  door  and  the 
corner  of  Holborn,  lived  a  Mr.  Edwin  Cross,  an  apothecary. 
Dropping  in  at  his  shop,  Chatterton,  by  familiarly  talking 
with  him  over  the  counter,  had,  almost  from  the  first  day  of 
his  residence  in  Brooke  Street,  struck  up  an  acquaintance  with 
him.  Cross,  who,  from  his  profession,  was  probably  a  man 
of  some  intelligence,  began  to  contract  a  real  liking  for  him ; 
he  thought  him  "  an  astonishing  genius,'^  and  knew  that  he 
was  engaged  in  writing  for  newspapers  and  magazines.  Before 
he  had  been  long  in  Brooke  Street,  it  became  his  settled  habit 
to  call  and  chat  with  Cross  every  time  he  passed  his  door, 
which  was  usually  two  or  three  times  every  day.      Cross 


296  CHATTERTOX: 

observed  that  he  seemed  to  know  something  of  physic,  and 
was  very  fond  of  talking  about  it. 

So  the  month  of  July  opens  ;  Chatterton  going  out  and  in 
as  usual,  and  sitting  up  late  at  night  in  his  room  among 
the  tiles ;  still  in  high  spirits,  if  not  so  fresh  as  at  first,  and 
still  also  with  some  money  in  his  pocket.  This  last  fact  is 
somewhat  touchingly  proved  by  his  next  letter  home,  dated 
July  8th  ;  sent,  apparently  along  with  a  box,  by  the  Bristol 
coach  or  carrier. 

"  Dear  Mother, — I  send  you  in  the  box 

"  Six  cups  and  saucers,  with  two  basins,  for  my  sister.  If  a  china  tea-pot  and 
cream-pot  is,  in  your  opinion,  necessary,  I  will  send  them ;  but  I  am  informed 
they  are  unfashionable,  and  that  the  red  china,  which  you  are  provided  with, 
is  more  in  use. 

"A  cargo  of  patterns  for  yourself,  with  a  snuff-box,  right  French,  and  very 
curious  in  my  opinion. 

"  Two  fans  : — The  silver  one  is  more  grave  than  the  other,  which  would  suit 
my  sister  best.     But  that  I  leave  to  you  both. 

"  Some  British  herb-snuff  in  the  box — be  careful  how  you  open  it.  (This  I 
omit,  lest  it  should  injure  the  other  matters.)  Some  British  herb-tobacco  for 
my  grandmother,  with  a  pipe.  Some  trifles  for  Thome.  Be  assured,  when- 
ever I  have  the  power,  my  will  won't  be  wanting  to  testify  that  I  remember 
you.     Yours, 

"  T.  Chatterton. 
"Julys,  1770. 

"N.B. — I  shall  forestall  your  intended  journey  and  pop  down  upon  you  at 
Christmas. 

"  I  could  have  wished  you  had  sent  my  red  pocket-book,  as  'tis  very 
material. 

"  I  bought  two  very  curious  twisted  pipes  for  my  grandmother;  but,  both 
breaking,  I  was  afraid  to  buy  others,  lest  they  should  break  in  the  box,  and, 
being  loose,  injure  the  china.  Have  you  heard  anything  further  of  the  clear- 
ance ?    Direct  for  me,  at  Mrs.  Angell's,  sack-maker,  Brooke  Street,  Holbom." 

From  his  giving  his  address  at  the  end  of  this  letter,  it  is 
perhaps  to  be  inferred  that  he  had  not  till  now  acquainted  his 
mother  with  his  change  of  lodging.  Probably,  as  we  have 
said,  he  still  called  at  ^  almsley's  for  his  letters.  This  would 
account  for  Mrs.  Ballance's  knowing  his  state  of  mind  on  the 
occasion  of  Beckford's  death. 

The  next  letter,  written  to  his  sister,  three  days  after  the 
last,  is  partly  a  continuation  of  it ;  but  it  contains  some 
references  to  his  literary  occupations  of  the  past  month,  and 
his  expectations  for  the  month  just  begun. 

"  Dear  Sister, — I  have  sent  you  some  china  and  a  fan.  You  have  your 
choice  of  two.  I  am  surprised  that  you  chose  purple  and  gold.  [Was  this  for 
the  fan  or  for  one  of  the  promised  'silks?']     I  went  into  the  shop  to  buy  it; 


A  STORY   OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  297 

but  it  is  the  most  disagreeable  colour  I  ever  saw — dead,  lifeless,  and  inelegant. 
Purple  and  pink,  or  lemon  and  pink,  are  more  genteel  and  lively.  Your  answer 
in  this  aflfair  will  oblige  me.  Be  assured  that  I  shall  ever  make  your  wants  my 
wants,  and  stretch  to  the  utmost  to  serve  you.  Remember  me  to  Miss  Sand- 
ford,  Miss  Rumsey,  Miss  Singer,  &c.  &c.  &c.  As  to  the  songs,  I  have  waited 
this  week  for  them,  and  have  not  had  time  to  copy  one  perfectly.  When  the 
season 's  over,  you  will  have  them  all  in  print.  I  had  pieces  last  month  in  the 
following  magazines — Gospel  Magazine,  Town  and  Country,  (viz.  *  Maria  Friend- 
less,' 'False  Step,'  'Hunter  of  Oddities,'  *  To  Miss  Bush,'  &c.,)  Court  and  City, 
London,  Political  Register,  &c.  &c.  The  Christian  Magazine,  as  they  are  not 
to  be  had  perfect,  are  not  worth  buying,  [This  Magazine,  begun  in  1760,  and 
carried  on  till  1767,  had  some  celebrity  as  having  been  edited  by  Dr.  Dodd; 
and  probably  his  sister  or  some  one  else  had  been  inquiring  about  it.] 

I  remain  yours, 
"  July  11,  1770.  "  T.  Chatteeton." 

The  next,  also  to  his  sister,  is  nine  days  later ;  and  it  was 
the  last  but  one  that  she  and  her  mother  were  to  receive  from 
him. 

"  I  am  about  an  Oratorio,  which,  when  finished,  will  purchase  you  a  gown. 
You  may  be  certain  of  seeing  me  before  the  1st  of  January,  1771.  The  clear- 
ance [from  Mr.  Lambert]  is  immaterial.  My  mother  may  expect  more  patterns. 
Almost  all  the  next  Town  and  Country  Magazine  is  mine.  I  have  an  universal 
acquaintance :  my  company  is  courted  everywhere ;  and  could  I  humble  my- 
self to  go  into  a  compter,  could  have  had  twenty  places  before  now.  But  I  must 
be  among  the  great ;  state-matters  suit  me  better  than  commercial.  The  ladies 
are  not  out  of  my  acquaintance.  I  have  a  great  deal  of  business  now,  and  must 
therefore  bid  you  adieu.  You  will  have  a  longer  letter  from  me  soon — and 
more  to  the  purpose.    Yours, 

"  T.  C. 

"  20th  July,  1770." 

These  three  letters,  giving  us  glimpses  as  thej  do  of  Chat- 
terton  at  three  successive  points  in  the  month  of  July,  carry 
us  over  nearly  the  whole  of  that  month.  It  is  necessary, 
however,  to  examine  them  a  little  in  the  light  which  subse- 
quent facts  cast  upon  them. 

It  is  evident,  at  least,  that  in  the  beginning  of  that  month, 
Chatterton  was  not  in  want  of  money.  The  presents  sent  to 
his  mother,  sister,  and  grandmother,  seem  to  have  been  rather 
costly  for  a  youth  in  his  circumstances ;  and  probably  left  him 
with  so  little,  that  ^had  it  been  known  at  home  how  dis- 
proportionate to  his  means  had  been  this  proof  of  his  affec- 
tion, the  pleasure  in  receiving  it  would  have  been  mixed  with 
anxiety  and  fear.  Clearly,  however,  from  the  first,  it  was  Chat- 
terton's  pride  to  convey  to  his  mother  and  sister  the  idea  that 
he  was  getting  on  splendidly ;  and  probably  it  was  part  of  his 
chief  delight  in  sending  the  presents,  to  fancy  how  they  woidd 


298  CHATTERTON  I 

be  exhibited  on  the  widow's  table  to  her  acquaintances, — how 
Lambert,  Barrett,  Catcott,  and  the  rest  would  hear  of  them, 
and  what  inferences,  reflecting  on  their  own  inability  to  appre- 
ciate a  youth  of  genius,  these  Bristol  pettifoggers  would  draw 
from  them  !  Still,  great  as  were  Chatterton's  affection  and 
pride,  it  is  not  to  be  conceived  that  he  would  have  actually 
impoverished  himself  in  gratifying  them,  unless  at  the  time 
he  had  been  convinced  that  he  had  such  prospects  of  con- 
tinued work  as  could  at  least  supply  him  with  what  was 
absolutely  necessary  for  his  own  subsistence.  Unfortunately, 
when  we  look  carefully  at  the  second  and  third  letters,  we 
begin  to  perceive  a  kind  of  consciousness  creeping  through, 
that  he  had,  at  the  time  of  writing  the  first,  been  too  sanguine 
in  this  respect.  There  are  the  same  bragging  generalities  as 
in  the  earlier  letters  of  May  and  June — extremely  "  busy," 
"  an  universal  acquaintance,"  "  his  company  courted  every- 
where," and  the  like ;  but  there  is  no  such  profuse  mention  as 
in  these  earlier  letters  of  specific  shifts  and  contrivances  in 
reserve  against  the  coming  weeks,  and  of  actual  engagements 
on  hand.  He  tells  of  his  great  doings  in  last  month's 
magazines ;  but  when  he  condescends  on  the  business  of  the 
month  then  passing,  all  that  he  says  is,  that  his  songs,  which 
he  had  expected  to  see  in  copper-plate  by  this  time,  were  still 
not  out ;  that  he  had  begun  an  oratorio ;  and  that  Hamilton 
had  so  much  of  his  copy  that  nearly  the  whole  of  the  forth- 
coming Town  and  Country  Magazine  would  be  his.  We  hear 
nothing  of  farther  work  for  the  Middlesex  Journal^  for  the 
Political  Register,  for  the  London  Museum,  or  any  of  the  other 
periodicals.  In  short,  it  is  too  plain  that,  by  the  end  of  July, 
Chatterton  is  in  want  of  work  and  begins  to  know  it. 

One  can  see  various  reasons  why  Chatterton  should  some- 
what suddenly  have  found  himself  in  this  predicament, 
without  resorting  to  the  supposition — though  there  may  be 
something  in  that  too — that  he  and  his  bookselling  patrons 
were  not  on  such  good  terms  as  at  first,  and  that,  by  his 
incessant  calling  upon  them,  he  had  begun  to  be  regarded  by 
them  as  a  bore. 

The  months  of  July  and  August,  we  should  think,  were 


A  STORY  OF  THE  YEAR   1770.  299 

then,  even  more  than  now,  about  the  slackest  portions  of  the 
London  year;  and  in  the  year  1770  they  seem  to  have  been 
even  slacker  than  usual.  It  was  the  season  of  the  Parliamentary 
recess,  and  of  the  hot  summer  weather,  when  all  who  were 
not  absolutely  tied  to  town  were  away  taking  their  holiday. 
Wilkes  and  his  family,  we  find,  were  off  to  a  watering-place 
on  the  southern  coast,  en  route  for  the  Continent.  And  so  with 
other  families  in  the  same  station — some  north,  some  west, 
some  south,  according  to  their  tastes  and  opportunitieSi  The 
Margate  hoys  were  in  full  activity,  conveying  their  annual 
freights  of  sea-sick  London  tradesmen,  and  their  wives  and 
children,  and  packets  of  unnecessary  sandwiches,  to  that 
greedy  coast-town  of  Kent,  where  the  lodging-house  keepers 
had  already  raised  their  prices,  and  the  bathing-machines 
were  out  on  the  beach,  and  all  the  shop-windows  were  ex- 
hibiting their  plates  of  boiled  prawns  and  shrimps,  and  the 
dancing  saloons  and  petty  theatres  were  in  full  play.  Even 
men  who  were  never  happy  out  of  the  London  streets, 
yielded  to  custom  and  forsook  them  now.  The  taverns  and 
coffee-houses  had  little  to  do.  The  clubs  were  all  broken  up, 
and  their  scattered  atoms  were  wandering  melancholy  among 
green  fields,  smelling  the  fresh  hay,  amusing  the  farmers  by 
their  ignorance  of  crops,  and  saying  it  was  so  pleasant  to  get 
away  from  town,  but  really  longing  for  the  time  when  they 
should  again  come  together  in  their  familiar  rooms  in  the 
courts  round  about  Temple  Bar,  and  sit  down,  reconstituted 
for  another  year,  to  their  punch,  their  gossip,  and  their  oysters. 

So  it  was  with  the  famous  club  of  the  Turk's  Head, 
Gerard  Street.  Where  Garrick,  Burke,  and  Sir  Joshua  Eey- 
nolds,  and  the  rest  of  the  club  were  rusticating,  we  do  not 
know;  but  we  can  trace  the  great  Doctor  Samuel,  and  his 
dear  familiar  Goldy. 

Johnson,  whom  Bozzy  had  left  with  regret  in  the  previous 
November,  in  order  to  go  back  to  Scotland  and  settle  down  as 
a  married  man,  had  produced  nothing  this  year  except  his 
Tory  pamphlet  on  the  Wilkes  question,  entitled  The  False 
Alarm  ;  the  eficct  of  which  had  been  to  procure  him  no  end  of 
abuse  from  the  Opposition  writers,  and  to  fill  the  Opposition 


300  CHATTERTON  : 

papers  with  paragraplis  about  liis  pension.  In  the  midst  of  this 
unpopularity  he  had  been  living  on  as  usual,  and  making  pre- 
parations for  a  new  edition  of  his  "  Shakespeare."  But  in  the 
end  of  June, — the  poet  Akenside  had  died  on  the  23rd  of  that 
month,  and  his  body  was  then  lying  in  its  coffin  in  his  house 
in  Burlington  Street, — he  did  as  others  were  doing  and  went 
out  of  town.  His  purpose  was  to  visit  his  native  Lichfield, 
and  other  parts  of  the  midland  counties.  During  a  con- 
siderable portion  of  the  month  of  July  he  was  at  Lichfield, 
whence,  as  we  learn  from  Mr.  Croker,  he  wrote  two  letters  to 
Mrs.  Thrale  at  Streatham.  In  one  of  these,  dated  the  11th  of 
July — the  day  on  which  Chatterton  wrote  the  second  of  the 
foregoing  letters  from  Brooke  Street — we  find  him  informing 
Mrs.  Thrale  that  he  was  going  about  in  his  native  town, 
''  not  wholly  unaffected  by  the  revolutions  "  that  had  taken 
place  in  it  since  he  remembered  it,  and,  in  particular,  taking 
considerable  interest  in  a  book  recently  found  by  Mr.  Greene, 
an  apothecary  of  the  town,  which  showed  "  who  paid  levies 
in  our  parish,  and  how  much  they  paid,  above  an  hundred 
years  ago.^'  "  Many  families,"  he  says,  "  that  paid  the  parish 
rates  are  now  extinct,  like  the  race  of  Hercules.  Pulvis  et 
umbra  sumns.  What  is  nearest  touches  us  most.  The  pas- 
sions rise  higher  at  domestic  than  at  imperial  tragedies. ^^ 
Thus  moralizing  about  Lichfield  and  its  vicinity,  the  ponder- 
ous and  noble  man  remained  out  of  town  apparently  about 
three  months  in  all ;  for  it  is  not  till  the  2 1  st  of  September 
that  we  are  sure  of  his  being  again  back  in  his  well-known 
quarters  in  Johnson's  Court. 

Dm-ing  a  portion,  at  least,  of  this  same  period.  Goldsmith 
was  also  absent  from  them.  His  Deserted  Village  had  ap- 
peared this  year,  on  the  26th  of  May,  and  may,  therefore,  have 
been  read  by  Chatterton  during  the  first  week  of  his  residence 
in  Brooke  Street.  Three  new  editions  were  called  for  in  the 
course  of  June ;  and  it  was  with  the  pathos  of  that  exquisite 
poem  fresh  in  his  heart,  and  its  pictures  of  rural  peace  and 
beauty  in  contrast  with  the  crowded  anguish  of  cities,  still 
vivid  in  his  fancy,  that  Goldsmith,  in  the  middle  of  July, 
permitted  himself  to  be  taken  off  on  a  short  continental  tour, 


A  STORY  OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  301 

as  one  of  a  party  made  up  by  liis  friends  the  Miss  Hor necks. 
Precisely  at  the  time  when  Chatterton  was  writing  his  last 
letters  home,  and  beginning  to  see  want  staring  him  in  the 
face,  was  this  kindest  of  Irish  hearts  taking  leave  for  a  while 
of  Brick  Court,  Fleet  Street,  and  all  its  pleasant  cares.     Ah, 
me !  so  very  kind  a  heart  was  that,  that  one  feels  as  if,  when 
it  left  London,  Chatterton's  truest  hope  was  gone.   Goldsmith 
never  saw  Chatterton ;  but  one  feels  as  if,  had  he  remained  in 
London,  Chatterton  would  have  been  more  safe.     Surely — 
even  if  by  some  express  electric  communication,  shot,  at  the 
moment  of  utmost  need,  under  the  very  stones  and  pavements 
that  intervened  between  the  two  spots — the  agony  pent  up  in 
that  garret  in  Brooke  Street,  where  the  gaunt  despairing  lad 
was  walking  to  and  fro,  would  have  made  itself  felt  in  the 
chamber  in  Brick  Court ;  the  tenant  of  that  chamber  would 
have  been  seized  by  a  restlessness  and  a  creeping  sense  of 
some   horror   near ;    he   would  have   hurried   out,  led,  nay 
driven,  by  an  invisible  power,  and,  by  the  grace  of  God, 
Brick  Court  and  Brooke  Street  would  have  come  together! 
O,  the  hasty  excited  gait  of  Goldsmith  as  he  turned  into 
Brooke  Street :  the  knock ;  the  rush  upstairs ;  the  garret-door 
burst  open ;  the  arms  of  a  friend  thrown  round  the  friendless 
youth ;  the  gush  of  tears  over  him  and  with  him ;  the  pride 
melted  out  of  the  youth  at  once  and  for  ever ;  the  joy  over 
a  young  soul  saved!     Phantasy  all,  phantasy  all!      What 
might  have  been  is  one  thing ;  what  has  been  is  another.     In 
those   late  days  of  July,  when  Chatterton  was   beginning 
to  foresee  the  worst,  Oliver  Goldsmith,  having  escaped  the 
little  mishaps  of  his  journey,  in  the  society  of  the  "  Jessamy 
Bride,"  and  her  sister,  from  London  to  Dover,  from  Dover  to 
Calais,  from  Calais  to  Lille,  and  from  Lille  to  Paris,  was 
going  about  in  Paris  seeing  the  sights,  but  longing,  even  in 
such  sweet  company,  to  be  back  in  London  again,  and  getting 
very  nervous  on  account  of  his  arrears  of  work.     He  was  in 
Paris  on  the  29th  of  July,  and  remained  there  some  time. 
Latterly  the  party  was  joined  by  a  person  who  rather  spoiled 
the  pleasure  of  it  for  poor  Goldy — a  certain  coarse  attorney, 
Mr.  Hickey ;  who  would  persist  in  quizzing  him  before  the 


302  CHATTERTON  ! 

ladies,  and  who  afterwards  brought  home  the  story  that,  when 
the  party  went  to  Versailles,  Goldy,  in  order  to  prove  himself 
right  in  saying  that  a  certain  distance  beyond  one  of  the 
fountains  was  within  a  leap,  actually  took  the  leap  and  fell 
into  the  water.  All  August,  Goldy  had  to  bear  his  absence 
from  London,  the  thought  of  his  arrears  of  work,  and  the 
jokes  of  Mr.  Hickey.  Not  till  the  first  week  in  September 
was  he  back  in  town. 

Well,  but  though  Goldsmith,  Johnson,  Wilkes,  the  legis- 
lators of  the  country,  and  all  the  families  of  the  wealthier 
tradesmen  were  out  of  town  on  their  annual  holiday,  the 
town  was  not  empty.  A  huge  host  of  citizens  of  all  classes 
remained  behind  on  duty,  tiding  over  the  languid  season  as 
best  they  could ;  keeping  their  windows  open  to  abate  the 
heat  of  the  afternoon  sun  as  it  beat  on  the  brick  houses,  and 
strolling  out  of  an  evening,  if  they  could,  to  enjoy  the  cooler 
air  of  the  parks,  and  the  green  suburbs  round.  And  these, 
of  course,  still  constituted  "  the  town ;  "  and  "  the  town," 
even  in  the  languid  season,  will  have  its  excitements  and  its 
topics  of  gossip.  Thus,  in  London,  in  the  months  of  July 
and  August  1770,  though  there  was  a  comparative  lull  in 
politics,  consequent  on  the  preternatural  excitement  of  the 
first  half  of  the  year,  there  was  still  matter  of  interest  fot 
the  newsmongers.  On  the  29th  of  June,  Alderman  Treco- 
thick  had  been  elected,  after  a  somewhat  brisk  contest  in  the 
city,  to  succeed  Beckford  in  the  Mayoralty ;  and  on  the  12th 
of  July,  Beckford's  place,  as  representative  of  the  city  in 
Parliament,  was  filled  up,  after  similar  opposition,  by  the 
election,  in  the  old  city  fashion,  of  Alderman  Oliver.  These 
elections,  affbrding  room  as  they  did  for  new  trials  of 
strength  between  the  Wilkesites  and  the  Court  party,  were 
not  regarded  with  indifierence  ;  and  indeed  it  was  not  till  the 
second  of  the  two  was  over  that  Wilkes  himself  left  town. 
Then,  there  was  a  good  deal  of  interest  among  the  city 
people  about  a  proposed  statue  to  Beckford ;  and  motion  after 
motion  on  the  subject  was  discussed  at  the  common  council. 
The  trial  of  Mr.  Miller,  of  the  London  Evening  Post,  for 
re-publishing  Junius's  letter,  did  not  come  on  till  the  13th 


A  STORY   OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  303 

of  July,  and  gave  rise  to  new  arguments  respecting  the 
liberty  of  the  press,  and  the  conduct  of  Lord  Mansfield.  A 
trial  of  a  different  character,  and  far  more  piquant  for  the 
town  at  large,  was  that  of  his  Eoyal  Highness  the  Duke 
of  Cumberland,  on  an  action  for  damages  brought  against 
him  by  the  husband  of  a  certain  lady  of  high  rank.  The 
jury  awarded  10,000Z.  of  damages,  greatly  to  the  delight  of 
the  town.  For  many  weeks  the  newspapers,  other  matters  not 
being  abundant,  lived  on  this  trial,  reporting  the  proceedings 
at  great  length,  commenting  on  them,  and  printing  piece  by 
piece  the  letters  that  had  passed  between  the  aristocratic 
lovers.  When  cloyed  with  this  delicious  literature,  citizens 
and  their  apprentices  who  were  in  search  of  amusement 
could  avail  themselves  of  the  Haymarket  and  Sadler's 
Wells  Theatres,  or  of  one  or  other  of  the  public  gardens. 
Foote  at  the  Haymarket  was  drawing  crowds  by  his  Lame 
Lover ;  and  at  the  Marybone  Gardens,  the  favourite  pieces 
were  The  Magic  Girdle,  and  Serva  Padrona.  By  way  of 
morning  relish  after  such  evening  dissipations,  the  citizens 
could  hear  of  robberies  committed  over-night,  and  particu- 
larly of  robberies  of  the  post-boys  carrying  the  mail-bags  to 
and  from  London.  Robberies  of  this  class  were  unusually 
common  at  the  time,  so  that  the  post-boys  never  set  out 
without  making  up  their  minds  to  the  chance  of  meeting  a 
highwayman.  One  post-boy  who  was  robbed,  the  papers 
informed  their  readers,  was  fifty  years  of  age. 

Attending  to  all  this  news  from  Ms  hot  lodging  in  narrow 
Brooke  Street,  with  a  view  to  extract  occupation  for  his  pen 
out  of  it,  Chatterton,  as  we  have  said,  had  begun  to  find  the 
task  a  very  hard  one.  No  doubt  he  went  about  the  streets 
with  his  eyes  and  ears  open,  and  entered  the  cofi*ee-houses 
to  see  what  he  could  pick  up  there  in  the  shape  of  informa- 
tion or  suggestion.  No  doubt  he  called  frequently  at  the 
office  of  the  Middlesex  Journal,  and  made  proposals  to 
Bingley  of  the  North  Briton  for  essays  in  lieu  of  the  can- 
celled one  on  Beckford,  and  similar  proposals  to  the  London 
Museum,  the  Court  and  City  Magazine,  and  the  Political 
Register.     But,  whether  it  was  that  some  of  the  printers  and 


304  CHATTERTON  : 

editors  were  out  of  town,  or  that  they  were  overstocked 
already  and  disposed  to  retrench,  or  that  they  had  ceased  to 
care  for  having  Chatterton's  contributions  in  particular,  cer- 
tain it  is  that  all  these  efforts  were  fruitless.  On  the  Town 
and  Country  Magazine  alone  had  he  any  hold.  **  Almost  all 
the  next  Town  and  Country  Magazine  is  mine,"  he  says  to  his 
sister  on  the  20th  of  July  ;  and  this  is  in  reality  the  sum-total 
of  his  literary  dependence  for  that  month.  We  have  looked 
over  the  July  number  of  the  Magazine,  in  order  to  verify 
the  statement.     The  following  is  a  list  of  its  contents  : — 

"1.  state  of  Europe  for  July;  2.  *  Character  of  Eolus,  by  a  Hunter  of 
Oddities  ;  3.  Anecdote  of  Young  Reynard  ;  4.  An  original  letter  from  a  Tutor  to 

his  r ^1  pupil ;  5.  Letter  from  an  Irish  Fortune-hunter ;  6.  History  of  the 

T^te-^-tete,  or  Memoirs  of  Tom  Tilbury,  &c. ;  7.  Amusing  and  instructive 
Questions  ;  8.  Remonstrance  from  the  Secretary  of  the  Female  Coterie ;  9.  Par- 
ticular Details  in  the  Trials  of  the  Printers  for  publishing  Junius's  Letter; 
10.  Sergeant  Glynn's  Argument  (in  the  same  case)  at  large ;  11.  Lord  Mans- 
field's Charge  (in  the  same  case);  12.  The  Folly  of  Despair — a  moral  Tale; 
13.  The  Danger  of  Deceit;  14.  Singular  Resolution  of  a  Married  Lady;  15. 
The  Theatre,  No.  XVIIL  ;    16.   A  most  comic  Scene  from  th.Q  Lame  Lover ; 

17.  Trial  of  his  R.  H.  the  Duke  of  C ;  18.  Letters  of  the  D of  C 

and  Lady ;  19.  Mr.  Wedderburne's  Argument  and  Mr.  Dunning's  Reply ; 

20.  Charge  on  a  late  remarkable  Trial ;  21,  The  Gardener's  Kalendar  for  July ; 
22.  Character  of  Peter  the  Great ;  23.  Reflections  on  the  Characters  of  Caesar 
and  Addison  ;  24.  *Memoirs  of  a  Sad  Dog,  Part  I. ;  25.  *The  Polite  Advertiser, 

by  Sip  Butterfly  Feather ;  26.  A  Defence  of  Lady ,  by  a  Member  of  the 

Female  Coterie ;  27.  Experiments  on  certain  Dissolvents  for  the  Stone ;  28. 
Account  of  New  Books,  &c. ;  29.  Mathematical  Questions  and  Answers ;  30. 
Poetical  Pieces;  31.  Foreign  Afiairs;  32.  Domestic  Intelligence;  33.  Births, 
Marriages,  Deaths,  Bankrupts,  &c.  &c." 

Of  these  articles,  only  the  three  which  we  have  marked 
with  asterisks,  are  identified  as  Chatterton's  by  the  editors 
of  his  Remains.  It  is  possible,  however,  that  he  wrote  some 
of  the  others.  Still,  on  any  supposition,  his  contributions  to 
the  number  form  but  a  small  proportion  of  the  entire  con- 
tents. This  fact  may,  to  some  extent,  be  reconciled  with  his 
statement,  in  anticipation,  to  his  sister,  by  supposing  that, 
though  he  had  supplied  Hamilton  with  copy  enough  to  fill 
a  much  larger  space  in  the  Magazine,  Hamilton  had,  con- 
trary to  expectations,  published  only  a  small  portion  of  it, 
and  reserved  the  rest  for  future  numbers.  It  is  certain,  at 
least,  that  papers  by  Chatterton  did  continue  to  appear 
at  intervals  in  the  future  numbers  of  that  year.  Thus, 
in  the  August  number  (published,  it  must  be  remembered, 


\ 


A   STORY  OF   THE    YEAR   1770.  S05 

on  the  last  day  of  August) ,  there  appeared  not  only  the  second 
part  of  the  Memoirs  of  a  Sad  Dog,  but  also  a  paper  on  The 
Origin^  Nature,  and  Design  of  Sculpture,  to  accompany  an 
engraving  of  a  design  for  Beckford's  statue,  and  a  tale  called 
Tony  Selwood,  both  written  by  Chatterton.  These,  we  ima- 
gine, with  other  pieces  published  still  later,  were  all  in  Hamil- 
ton's hands  in  time  for  the  July  number  ;  but  he  divided  the 
Sad  Dog  into  two,  so  as  not  to  give  the  public  too  much  of 
him  at  a  time  ;  and  he  found  it  convenient  to  postpone  the  rest. 
The  Memoirs  of  a  Sad  Dog,  as  being  one  of  the  largest  of 
Chatterton's  prose  pieces,  and  as  having  been  written  at  the 
period  when  he  was  beginning  to  despond,  deserve  some 
notice.  They  are  the  imaginary  autobiography,  in  brief,  of 
one  Harry  Wildfire,  who,  having  been  left  five  thousand 
pounds  by  his  frugal  father,  sets  about  spending  it  as  a  fast 
man.  First  he  lost  one  of  his  thousands  in  gambling  ;  and 
the  remainder  soon  went  in  successive  debaucheries.  Ke- 
duced  to  his  last  penny,  he  then  throws  himself  on  his 
brother-in-law,  Sir  Stentor  Eanger,  a  country  knight,  whose 
ideas  are  limited  to  horses,  but  who,  having  some  rough, 
natural  kindliness,  forthwith  instals  his  reprobate  relative  in 
the  post  of  chief  of  his  stables.  Sir  Stentor  sometimes  has 
visitors  at  his  old  place,  and  among  these  is  "  the  redoubted 
Baron  Otranto"  of  antiquarian  celebrity  ;  who,  poking  about 
the  house,  falls  in  with  what  he  considers  a  remarkable 
curiosity  in  the  shape  of  a  stone  with  an  old  inscription  in 
Gothic  letters.  This  he  deciphers  with  great  pains  as  "  Hie 
jacet,''  the  "  corpus''  of  somebody  or  other  of  the  thirteenth 
century ;  the  fact,  known  to  all  the  stable-boys,  being  that  the 
stone  was  taken  from  a  neighbouring  churchyard,  and  was 
nothing  more  than  the  memorial  of  an  honest  couple,  James 
Hicks  and  his  wife.  After  living  with  Sir  Stentor  two 
years,  and  making  some  money  on  the  turf,  Wildfire  recom- 
mences his  old  career,  and  carries  it  on  till  he  is  again 
ruined,  when,  as  a  last  shift,  he  comes  to  town,  and  betakes 
himself  to  literature.  At  the  moment  of  his  writing  his  sad 
relation,  he  says  he  is  "  throned  in  a  broken  chair  within  an 
inch  of  a  thunder-cloud."     Such  is  the  story.     The  writing 

X 


306  CHATTERTON  : 

is  slipshod  in  the  extreme,  and  the  spirit  deplorably  coarse ; 
nor  is  there  any  merit  in  the  construction.  The  sole  interest 
it  has  consists  in  a  certain  evidence  it  furnishes  of  rough 
satirical  force,  and  in  an  occasional  passage,  like  that  on 
Walpole,  bearing  on  the  author's  own  life  and  circumstances. 
Thus,  the  hero,  after  describing  one  of  his  periods  of  good 
fortune,  breaks  out  in  mock  heroics  as  follows  : — 

"  But,  alas  !  happiness  is  of  short  duration ;  or,  to  speak  in  the  language  of 
the  high-sounding  Ossian,  *  Behold  thou  art  happy ;  but  soon,  ah  !  soon,  wUt 
thou  be  miserable.  Thou  art  as  easy  and  tranqml  as  the  face  of  the  green- 
mantled  puddle ;  but  soon,  ah  !  soon,  wilt  thou  be  tumbled  and  tossed  by 
misfortvmes,  like  the  stream  of  the  water-mill.  Thou  art  beautiful  as  the 
Cathedral  of  Canterbury ;  but  soon  wilt  thou  be  deformed  like  Chinese  palace- 
paling.  So  the  sun,  rising  in  the  east,  gilds  the  borders  of  the  black  mountains, 
and  laces  with  his  golden  rays  the  dark-brown  heath.  The  hind  leaps  over  the 
flowery  lawn,  and  the  reeky  bull  rolls  in  the  bubbling  brook.  The  wild  boar 
makes  ready  his  armour  of  defence.  The  inhabitants  of  the  rocks  dance,  and 
all  nature  joins  in  the  song.  But  see  !  riding  on  the  wings  of  the  wind,  the 
black  clouds  fly.  The  noisy  thunders  roar ;  the  rapid  lightnings  gleam ;  the 
rainy  torrents  pour ;  and  the  dropping  swain  flies  over  the  mountain,  swift  as 
Bickerstaff",  the  son  of  song,  when  the  monster  Bumbailiano,  keeper  of  the 
dark  and  black  cave,  pursued  him  over  the  hills  of  death,  and  the  green 
meadows  of  dark  men.'  Oh,  Ossian  !  immortal  genius  !  what  an  invocation 
could  I  make  now  !  But  I  shall  leave  it  to  the  abler  pen  of  Mr.  Dufi",  and  spin 
out  the  thread  of  my  own  adventures." 

The  conclusion  of  the  piece  is  even  more  specific.  Mr. 
Wildfire,  from  his  "  broken  chair  within  an  inch  of  the 
thunder-cloud,"  thus  details  his  brief  experience  as  an  author 
in  London : — 

"  The  first  fruits  of  my  pen  were  a  political  essay,  and  a  piece  of  poetry. 
The  first  I  carried  to  a  patriotic  bookseller,  who  is,  in  his  own  opinion,  of 
much  consequence  to  the  cause  of  liberty ;  and  the  poetry  was  left  with  an- 
other of  the  same  tribe,  who  made  bold  to  make  it  a  means  of  pufiing  his 
magazine,  but  refused  any  gratuity.  Mr.  Britannicus  [Bingley  of  the  North 
Briton  ?],  at  first  imagining  that  the  piece  was  not  to  be  paid  for,  was  lavish  of 
his  praises,  and,  I  might  depend  upon  it,  it  should  do  honour  to  his  flaming 
patriotic  paper ;  but  when  he  was  told  that  I  expected  some  recompense,  he 
assumed  an  air  of  criticism,  and  begged  my  pardon ;  he  did  not  know  the 
circumstance,  and  really  he  did  not  think  it  good  language  or  sound  reason- 
ing ! — I  was  not  discouraged  by  the  objections  and  criticisms  of  the  bookselling 
tribe ;  and,  as  I  knew  the  art  of  Curlism  pretty  well,  I  made  a  tolerable  hand 
of  it.  But,  Mr.  Printer,  the  late  prosecution  against  the  booksellers  having 
frightened  them  all  out  of  their  patriotism,  I  am  necessitated  either  to  write 
for  the  entertainment  of  the  public  or  in  defence  of  the  ministry.  As  I  have 
some  little  remains  of  conscience,  the  latter  is  not  very  agreeable.  Political 
writing  of  either  side  of  the  question  is  of  little  service  to  the  entertainment 
or  instruction  of  the  reader.  Abuse  and  scurrility  are  generally  the  chief 
figures  in  the  language  of  party.  I  am  not  of  the  opinion  of  those  authors 
who  deem  eveiy  man  in  place  a  rascal,  and  every  man  out  of  place  a  patriot. 
Permit  this,  then,  to  appear  in  your  universally -admired  magazine ;  it  may 
give  some  entertainment  to  your  readers  and  a  dinner  to 

"  Your  humble  servant, 

**  Harry  Wildfire." 


A  STORY   OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  307 

This,  we  fear,  was  but  too  true  a  description  of  Chat- 
terton's  own  circumstances  wliile  he  was  writing.  He  too 
was  "  throned  on  a  broken  chair  within  an  inch  of  a  thunder- 
cloud," and  had  come  to  the  extremity  when  too  literally  the 
purpose  of  giving  entertainment  to  his  readers  was  bound  up 
with  that  of  obtaining  means  for  his  own  next  dinner.  But 
it  was  not,  as  in  the  case  of  his  imaginary  hero,  "  the 
monster  Bumbailiano,"  that  was  pursuing  him  over  the  hills 
of  death,  and  the  green  meadows  of  dark  men.  It  was  a 
more  fearful  monster  still — the  monster  Want,  without  any 
bailiff  as  harbinger.  No  imaginary  five  thousand  pounds  had 
he  wasted  ;  no  writs  were  out  against  Mm ;  else,  probably, — 
for  Debt,  though  negative  property,  still  is  a  kind  of  property, 
and  functions  as  such  to  the  advantage  of  its  possessor, — it 
might  have  been  better  for  him !  He  was  but  a  poor  widow's 
son  of  Bristol,  who  had  been  working  like  a  slave  for  three 
months  in  London  to  obtain  the  barest  livelihood,  and  now 
found  that  even  that  was  failing  him. 

Hamilton,  at  best,  must  have  been  a  stingy  paymaster. 
Judging  from  the  rate  of  his  previous  payments — two 
shillings  for  two  paragraphs,  and  half-a-guinea  for  sixteen 
songs — Chatterton's  receipts  from  him  for  his  July  contri- 
butions can  have  gone  but  a  very  little  way ;  even  if  they 
had  not  been  spent  in  anticipation  before  the  month  was 
over.  It  seems  clear  enough,  too,  that  if  Hamilton  did  pay 
punctually,  according  to  his  miserable  tariff,  he  was  resolute 
against  solicitations  for  an  advance  on  the  faith  of  future  work, 
or  even  of  manuscript  on  hand.  Accordingly,  during  the 
latter  half  of  July,  we  are  to  fancy  Chatterton  almost  at  his 
last  shilling.  One  day  during  that  month — we  imagine  it 
shortly  after  he  had  sent  off  the  presents  to  his  mother  and 
sister,  if  indeed  it  was  not  while  he  was  packing  up  those 
presents — he  went  into  Mrs.  Wolfe's  shop  to  buy  some  curls 
which  he  had  seen  in  her  window,  and  which  he  said  he 
wanted  to  send  to  his  sister;  but,  on  hearing  the  price, 
he  could  not  pay  it,  and  "went  away  seemingly  much 
mortified."  This  argues  that,  when  he  had  sent  off  the 
presents,  he  was  left  with  next  to  nothing.     He  did  contrive, 

x2 


308  CHATTERTOX : 

however,  during  that  month,  and  indeed  to  the  last,  to  pay 
his  landlady  regularly  for  his  room ;  preferring,  as  a  matter 
of  course,  that  the  deficit,  if  their  must  be  one,  should  be 
in  his  own  actual  food.  No  visits  any  longer  to  the  theatres 
and  the  gardens ;  visits  to  the  coffee-houses,  if  made  at  all, 
conducted  on  the  most  parsimonious  scale ;  no  purchases  of 
articles  of  dress,  as  at  first ;  his  very  shoes,  if  we  could  see 
the  soles,  worn  through,  so  that  the  dust  gets  in  as  he 
walks,  and  if  it  rains  his  feet  are  wet!  As  he  walks  out, 
it  is  this  consciousness  of  his  shuffling  and  poverty-stricken 
appearance  that  most  distresses  him ;  and  it  is  part  of  his 
meditations,  as  people  pass  him,  whether  they  remark  it. 
Probably  what  he  cares  far  less  about  is  that,  in  the  privacy 
of  his  lodging,  he  lives  on  bread  and  water.  But  his  land- 
lady, aware  of  the  full  extent  of  his  poverty,  has  noted  this 
circumstance  as  the  most  symptomatic  of  all.  She  has  even 
ascertained  that  he  always  buys  his  loaves,  one  of  which 
lasts  him  for  a  week,  "  as  stale  as  possible,"  that  they  may 
**  last  the  longer."  Moved  by  this  and  by  other  observations 
of  the  same  kind,  she  ventures  one  day,  when  he  is  paying  her 
his  rent,  and  when  she  knows  that  he  has  no  money  at  all  left, 
to  offer  him  back  sixpence.  He  refused  to  take  it,  saying 
with  some  anger,  and  pointing  to  his  forehead,  *'I  have 
that  here  which  will  get  me  more."  Cross,  the  apothecary, 
also  notices  when  he  calls  upon  him,  that  his  appearance 
betokens  extreme  want.  Indeed,  he  learns  from  Chatterton 
himself  that  Mr.  Hamilton,  who  is  now  his  chief  reliance,  is 
"  using  him  very  badly  ;^'  {.  e.,  as  we  suppose,  either  will  not 
pay  him  for  articles  already  contributed,  or  will  not  let  him 
have  a  farthing  in  advance.  Cross,  as  delicately  as  possible, 
invites  him  again  and  again  to  take  a  meal  with  himself  and 
Mrs.  Cross ;  but  "  he  was  so  proud,"  that  he  never  could  get 
him  to  do  so,  and  even  feared  giving  him  offence  by  repeat- 
ing the  invitation.  He  had  come  more  and  more  to  like  him, 
and  to  enjoy  his  chats  twice  a  day  with  him  over  the 
counter;  on  which  occasions,  as  he  afterwards  told  Warton, 
^'  his  conversation,  a  little  infidelity  excepted,  was  most 
captivating." 


A  STORY   OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  309 

And  so  out  and  in,  out  and  in,  during  all  the  late  days  of 
July,  wanders  the  poor  youth,  growing  daily  more  wan  and 
haggard ;  out  in  the  morning,  or  about  mid-day,  on  his 
daily  round  among  the  publishing  and  editorial  offices  near, 
the  doors  of  which  begin  to  be  shut  against  him  ;  or  farther 
still,  on  his  aimless  ramble  into  the  suburbs  and  the  seques- 
tered places  of  the  parks,  where  methinks  I  sometimes  see 
him  weeping  under  trees ;  and  then,  fatigued  and  fevered, 
back  again  in  the  evening  to  his  lodging,  where,  with  his 
stale  loaf  and  a  mug  of  water  beside  him,  he  sits  up  nearly 
all  night,  scribbling  hopelessly  his  Harry  Wildfires  and  his 
Tony  Selwoods,  or  sometimes  merely  gazing  hour  after  hour 
at  the  empty  grate.  Mrs.  Angell  "  frequently  found  his  bed 
untouched  in  the  morning  when  she  went  to  make  it."  The 
biographers  of  Schiller  tell  how  persons,  going  to  a  kind  of 
bank  or  high  gTound  behind  the  poet's  house  at  Weimar, 
could  see  him  stalking  up  and  down  in  his  lighted  room  till 
long  after  midnight,  engaged  in  poetical  composition,  every 
now  and  then  sitting  down  to  write  what  he  had  just  com- 
pleted in  thought,  and  helping  himself  freely  to  wine,  or 
to  coffee  with  wine  in  it,  to  maintain  his  phrenzy.  Had  the 
watchman  of  Brooke  Street  stood  opposite  that  window 
among  the  tiles,  the  light  of  which  he  must  have  noticed 
burning  so  long  after  all  the  others  were  dark,  he,  too,  might 
have  seen  the  shadow  of  a  poet  pass  and  repass.  But  there 
was  a  difference  between  the  two  cases.  In  the  one,  it  is  a 
famous  and  noble  man,  to  whose  nerves  the  world  will 
willingly  permit  wine  or  spices,  or  whatever  else  may  be 
necessary  that  they  may  thrill  ecstatically ;  in  the  other,  it  is 
a  poor  boy,  not  yet  eighteen,  living  on  a  crust  and  water,  and 
writing  that  he  may  get  more  of  that.  There  he  sits !  The 
short  July  night  passes ;  the  light  of  the  morning  breaks  over 
the  city,  paling  that  by  which  he  is  writing ;  he  looks  up  to 
be  aware  that  another  day  has  come,  that  people  are  moving 
about  the  streets,  and  that  the  sparrows  are  chirping  along 
the  eaves  ! 

July  is  gone,  and  it  is  now  the  month  of  August.  There 
is  no  better  hope.     Indeed,  the  prospect  is  worse.     The  last 


310  CHATTERTON  : 

driblet  of  money  from  Hamilton,  on  account  of  July,  is 
exhausting  itself  as  former  driblets  had  done  ;  and,  Hamilton 
having  already  enough  of  his  copy  on  hand,  there  is  no 
demand  for  any  new  copy  for  the  August  number  of  the 
Town  and  Country.  All  other  magazines  and  periodicals  are 
closed  as  before.  If  he  writes  at  all,  it  must  be  on  pure 
speculation,  or  for  the  mere  sake  of  writing. 

So  much,  probably,  had  become  known  to  him  before 
August  was  ten  days  old.  Mercifully  it  is  not  given  to  us  to 
know  the  history  of  those  ten  days.  Out  and  in,  out  and  in, 
every  day  twenty-four  hours  long,  and  each  of  these  hours 
to  be  gone  through  somewhere  and  somehow,  that  is  the 
substance  of  the  history,  even  if  it  could  be  told.  Cross, 
who  could  now  see  that  his  visitor  was  "  half-starving,"  and 
to  whom  he  is  more  confidential  about  his  circumstances 
than  to  any  one  else,  takes  the  opportunity  of  recommending 
him  to  return  to  Bristol.  *'  He  only  heaved  a  deep  sigh," 
said  Cross,  "  and  begged  me  with  tears  in  his  eyes  never  to 
mention  the  hated  name  again."  There  is  indeed  something 
unaccountably  stubborn  in  his  determination  not  to  ask  any 
assistance  from  that  quarter.  One  would  think  that  a  letter 
to  Catcott  or  even  to  Cary,  stating  the  actual  truth,  would 
have  had  some  result ;  not  to  say  that,  poor  as  his  mother 
was,  it  was  certainly  within  her  power,  if  even  by  selling 
what  he  had  sent  her  and  other  things,  to  have  sent  him  a 
sum  sufficient  to  prevent  the  worst.  But  he  has  ceased  to 
write  home,  and  they  can  only  guess  what  he  is  doing. 
Eather  than  that  the  truth  should  be  known  in  Bristol,  and 
that,  after  all  his  boasting,  the  jest  should  go  round  among 
his  friends  there  of  his  total  failure,  he  will  die  of  starvation ! 

One  effect,  however,  Cross's  recommendation  seems  to  have 
produced.  The  thought,  we  have  seen,  of  obtaining  a  clerk's 
place  or  some  similar  situation  in  a  counting-house  in  London, 
had  more  than  once  occurred  to  him ;  and  also  the  thought 
of  getting  some  kind  of  appointment  that  would  take  him 
abroad.  To  this  last  notion  in  a  somewhat  modified  form  he 
now  returns.  Fond,  when  in  Bristol,  of  reading  medical 
books,  which  Barrett  used  to  lend  him,  he  had  picked  up,  as  he 


I 


A   STORY   OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  311 

thought  himself,  a  considerable  smattering  of  medical  know- 
ledge ;  and  much  of  his  talk  with  Cross  was  about  physic. 
In  consequence  perhaps  of  something  that  passed  in  these 
conversations,  it  appeared  to  Chatterton  that  it  might  be 
possible  for  him  to  get  an  appointment  as  surgeon  or 
surgeon's  mate  on  board  of  some  ship.  How  he  proposed 
to  manage  it,  we  cannot  say ;  but  in  those  days  ^'  the  ex- 
perienced surgeons"  that  ships,  and  especially  African  ships, 
carried,  were  probably,  in  many  cases,  without  the  qualifi- 
cation of  a  diploma.  Chatterton,  at  all  events,  was  prepared 
to  doctor  any  crew  that  would  take  him.  As  a  first  step 
towards  trying  for  such  an  appointment,  he  thoiight  it  worth 
while  to  apply  to  Barrett  for  some  kind  of  certificate  or  testi- 
monial which  he  might  show  to  owners  of  vessels.  This  he 
appears  to  have  done  directly  in  a  letter  sent  to  Barrett ;  but 
he  also  did  it  indirectly  in  the  course  of  a  letter  to  Catcott, 
written  on  the  12th  of  August.  The  second  letter  is  extant. 
It  is  evidently  an  answer  to  one  which  Catcott  had  sent 
to  him. 

"London,  August  12,  1770. 

*'SlR, — A  correspondent  from  Bristol  had  raised  my  admiration  to  the 
highest  pitch,  by  informing  me  that  an  appearance  of  spirit  and  generosity  had 
crept  into  the  niches  of  avarice  and  meanness — ^that  the  murderer  of  Newton, 
Ferguson,  [James  Ferguson,  the  mechanician,  who  had  written  a  popular  work 
simplifying  Newton's  Philosophy  ?]  had  met  with  every  encouragement  that 
ignorance  could  bestow ;  that  an  episcopal  palace  was  to  be  erected  for  the 
enemy  of  the  whore  of  Babylon,  and  the  present  turned  into  a  stable  for  the 
ten-headed  beast ;  that  a  spire  was  to  be  patched  to  St.  Mary  Redclifife,  and  the 
streets  kept  cleaner;  with  many  other  impossibilites.  But,  when  Mr.  Catcott 
(the  Champion  of  Bristol)  doubts  it,  it  may  be  doubted.  Your  description  of 
the  intended  steeple  struck  me.     I  have  seen  it,  but  not  as  the  invention  of 

Mr. .  All  that  he  can  boast  is  Gothicizing  it.  Give  yourself  the  trouble  to 

send  to  Mr.  Weobley's,  Holborn,  for  a  view  of  the  Church  of  St.  Mary  de  la 
Annunciation,  at  Madrid,  and  you  will  see  a  spire  almost  the  parallel  of  what 
you  describe.  The  conduct  of is  no  more  than  what  I  expected.  I  had  re- 
ceived information  that  he  was  absolutely  engaged  in  the  defence  of  the 
ministry,  and  had  a  pamphlet  on  the  stocks  which  was  to  have  been  paid  with 
a  translation  [i.e.  to  a  new  see;  for  it  is  clearly  Dr.  Newton,  Bishop  of  Bristol, 
that  is  meant.]  In  consequence  of  this  information,  I  inserted  the  following 
paragraph  in  one  of  my  *  Exhibitions '  [newspaper-squibs  so  named]  : — *  Reve- 
lation  unravelled   by  :  The  ministry  are  indefatigable   in  establishing 

themselves ;  they  spare  no  expense  so  long  as  the  expense  does  not  lie  upon 
them.  This  piece  represents  the  tools  of  the  Administration  offering  the 
Doctor  a  pension,  or  translation,  to  new  model  his  treatise  on  the  Revelation, 
and  to  prove  Wilkes  to  be  an  Atheist.' 

"  The  Editor  of  Baddeley's  Bath  Journal  has  done  me  the  honour  to  murder 
most  of  my  hieroglyphics,  that  they  may  be  abbreviated  for  his  paper.  What- 
ever may  be  the  political  sentiments  of  your  inferior  clergy,  their  superiors 


312  chatterton': 

are  all  flamingly  ministerial.  Should  your  scheme  for  a  single  r6w  of  houses 
in  Bridge  Street  take  place,  conscience  must  tell  you  that  Bristol  will  owe  even 
that  beauty  to  avarice;  since  the  absolute  impossibility  of  finding  tenants 
for  a  double  row  is  the  only  occasion  of  your  having  but  one.  The  Gothic 
dome  I  mentioned  was  not  designed  by  Hogarth.  I  have  no  great  opinion  of 
him  out  of  his  ludicrous  walk ;  here  he  was  undoubtedly  inimitable.  It  was 
designed  by  the  great  Cipriani.  The  following  description  may  give  you  a 
faint  idea  of  it.  From  an  hexagonal  spiral  tower  (such  as  I  believe  Redcliflfe 
is)  rose  a  similar  palisado  of  Gothic  pillars,  three  at  a  cluster  in  every  angle, 
but  single  and  at  equal  distance  in  angular  spaces.  The  pillars  were  trifoliated 
(as  Rowlie  terms  it),  and  supported  by  a  majestic  oval  dome,  not  absolutely 
circular  (that  would  not  be  Gothic),  but  terminating  in  a  point,  surmounted 
with  a  cross,  and  on  the  top  of  the  cross  a  globe.  The  last  two  ornaments  may 
perhaps  throw  you  into  a  fit  of  religious  reflection,  and  give  rise  to  many 
pious  reflections.  Heaven  send  you  the  comforts  of  Christianity  !  /  request 
them  not;  for  I  am  no  Christian.  .  .  . 

"  I  intend  going  abroad  as  a  surgeon.  Mr.  Barrett  has  it  in  his  power  to 
assist  me  greatly  by  his  giving  me  a  physical  character.  I  hope  he  will.  I 
trouble  you  with  a  copy  of  an  Essay  I  intend  publishing. 

*'  I  remain  your  much  obliged  humble  Servant, 

"  Thomas  Chatterton. 

"  Direct  to  me  at  Mrs.  Angell's,  sack-maker,  Brooke  Street,  Holbom." 

Aha  !  What  words  were  these  that  one  heard  ?  "  Heaven 
send  yon  the  comforts  of  Christianity !  I  request  them  not ;  for 
I  am  no  Christian !"  The  whole  letter,  with  its  hollow  mock- 
ing bitterness,  and  its  cool  architectural  details  penned  by  one 
who  knew  himself  to  be  on  the  brink  of  starvation,  has  for 
us  an  air  of  horrible  irony ;  but  these  words,  flung  into  it  so 
carelessly,  complete  the  impression,  and  convert  the  horrible 
into  the  ghastly. 

"  I  am  no  Christian."  The  words  are  simple,  strong,  and 
straightforward.  What  do  they  mean  ?  They  mean  that  he, 
a  youth  of  seventeen  years  and  nine  months,  born  in  a  town 
in  the  west  of  England,  bred  up  there  as  an  attorney's  clerk, 
and  now  lodged  in  a  London  garret,  without  food  to  eat,  has, 
by  dint  of  reading  and  reflection,  come  to  the  conclusion  that 
the  Divine  One  who  died  in  Judasa  eighteen  hundred  years  ago, 
and  whom  all  the  generations  of  men  in  the  fairest  lands  of  the 
world  since  have  been  worshiping  as  the  Son  of  God,  and 
building  temples  to,  and  believing  in  as  their  Lord  and  Saviour, 
was  in  reality  no  such  thing  or  being,  but,  at  the  utmost,  a 
wise  and  holy  Jew  !  They  mean  that  he,  this  same  English 
stripling,  has,  in  virtue  of  this  conclusion,  come  to  regard  all 
that  part  of  the  past  history  of  eighteen  centuries  which  had 
proceeded  on  the  belief  in  Christianity,  as  so  much  human 


A  STORY  OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  313 

action,  grand  perhaps  in  itself,  but  done  in  pursuit  of  an  illu- 
sion !  They  mean  that,  looking  about  him  upon  all  the  appa- 
ratus of  bishops,  churches,  and  schools  established  in  the 
service  of  this  belief,  he  could  view  it  with  a  smile,  as  a  fabric 
with  no  foundation,  piled  up  by  ancient  zeal,  and  cemented  by 
time,  custom,  and  the  necessities  of  social  arrangement !  They 
mean  that,  remembering  the  names  of  great  men  recently  or 
anciently  dead,  who  had  nourished  their  souls  in  this  belief, 
and  clung  to  it  through  grown  manhood  to  grey  old  age,  and 
died  serene  in  it,  and  left  their  testimonies  to  it  as  their 
most  solemn  words  to  the  world,  he  could  yet  account  for  all 
this  to  himself  by  supposing  that  these  men  were  and  would 
have  been  noble  anyhow,  and  that  the  special  form  of  their 
nobility  alone  was  due  to  this  intense  grasp  they  had  taken  of 
Humanity^ s  largest  hallucination !  They  mean  more  !  They 
mean  that  he,  the  boy  of  Bristol,  was  decidedly  of  opinion, 
with  Voltaire  and  others,  that,  though  the  earth  had  rolled  on 
for  ages,  a  brown  ball  spinning  in  the  azure,  and  freighted 
with  beings  capable  of  weal  and  woe,  all  longing,  as  by  the 
one  sole  law  of  their  constitution,  to  hear  some  voice  from 
behind  the  azure,  no  such  voice  had  really  spoken,  nor  any 
tongue  of  light  from  the  outer  realms  of  mystery  ever  struck 
the  surface  of  the  planet,  either  in  Judaea  or  elsewhere  !  They 
mean  that  the  world  did  not  seem  to  him  at  all  to  rest  certainly 
on  any  rule  of  love ;  but  to  be  possibly  only  an  aggregate  of 
beings,  more  or  less  clever,  more  or  less  miserable,  and  more 
or  less  rich,  jostling  together  and  working  on  to  some  end, 
though  no  one  could  say  what !  They  mean  that  in  the  matter 
even  of  Immortality,  or  a  future  world  in  continuation  of  this, 
he  had  no  absolute  certainty ;  that  sometimes  he  might  have 
a  glimpse  of  such  immortality  as  possible,  but  that  again  the 
glimpse  would  vanish  quite,  and  it  would  seem  to  him  that 
when  a  man  died  there  might  very  well  be  an  end  of  him,  and 
that,  should  the  earth  itself  ever  meet  a  sufficient  catastrophe 
to  destroy  all  the  life  upon  it  at  once,  there  would  be  some  risk 
of  an  end  to  the  race  too,  and  to  all  the  accumulated  memories 
and  maxims  of  its  sages  and  Shakespeares,  and  all  the  vast 
lore  of  its  libraries !     Sometimes,  indeed,  he  might  have  his 


314  CHATTERTON : 

new  doubts  on  this,  and  might  think  both  of  individual  life 
as  continued,  and  of  the  collective  wisdom  of  the  world  as  safe 
against  any  catastrophe,  and  sure,  should  the  earth  itself  be 
cracked  in  pieces  or  shrivelled  to  a  scroll,  to  take  wing  else- 
whither at  the  moment  of  the  last  shriek,  and  prolong  itself 
somewhere  and  somehow  to  the  further  issues  of  the  Universe! 
But,  at  all  events,  for  the  Heaven  and  Hell  of  the  Christian 
he  could  have  no  belief  left ;  and  if  a  poor  wretch,  weary  of 
the  world,  did  think  fit  to  kill  himself,  his  soul,  if  he  had  one, 
could  fare  none  the  worse  in  the  future  life  for  the  one  act  of 
rushing  suddenly  into  it ! 

There  is  abundant  proo#  in  scores  of  passages  in  Chatterton's 
writings,  and  in  his  recorded  conversations  with  his  friends 
among  the  young  men  of  Bristol,  that,  after  the  peculiarities 
of  that  coarse  and  scoffing  fashion  of  infidelity  which  had 
crept  over  so  much  of  English  society  in  his  day,  and  which 
was  represented  in  such  men  as  Wilkes,  he  had  substantially 
accustomed  himself  to  the  above  method  of  regarding  the 
Christian  religion.  It  is  unnecessary  to  multiply  quotations 
to  illustrate  his  way  of  speaking  of  Methodists,  preachers  like 
Whitfield,  and  priests  in  general.  Here  is  one,  selected  as 
being  comprehensive : — 

"  'Tis  mystery  all :  In  every  sect 
You  find  this  palpable  defect — 
The  axis  of  the  dark  machine 
Is  enigmatic  and  unseen  ; 
Opinion  is  the  only  guide 
By  which  our  senses  are  supplied." 

Now,  it  was  of  supremely  little  consequence  to  Christianity 
that  one  precocious  lad  the  more  had  taken  this  attitude  of 
hostility  to  it.  But  it  was  of  some  consequence  to  the  lad 
himself.  There  are  and  have  been  many — and  these  men  in 
our  Parliaments  and  in  other  high  places — who  might  in  a 
certain  sense  use  Chatterton's  phrase,  "I  am  no  Christian,"  and 
probably,  in  .using  it,  speak  the  exact  truth ;  and  yet  who 
never  do  use  it,  but  leave  it  to  their  loud-mouthed  critics  to 
make  the  iiaference  for  them.  One  has  to  distinguish,  there- 
fore, between  the  sceptic  who  finds  no  occasion  for  asserting 
this  negative  side  of  his  views  at  all,  and  the  sceptic  who  is 


b 


A  STORY   OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  315 


vehement  in  proclaiming  the  negative.  The  second  is  in  a 
different  stage  intellectually,  and  morally  in  a  more  restless 
predicament.  He  is  always  proclaiming  his  independence  of 
a  certain  class  of  considerations,  and  yet  he  is  always  meddling 
with  them.  So  it  was  with  Chatterton.  In  his  statement 
*'  I  am  no  Christian,"  and  his  spasmodic  variations  of  it  through 
his  writings,  one  sees  him  fascinated,  as  it  were,  by  the  very 
creed  towards  which  he  is  malignant,  so  that  he  cannot  avoid 
making  it  the  topic  of  his  thoughts.  It  is  as  if  he  saw  that 
he  had  parted  with  certain  beliefs,  the  very  pretence  of  which, 
the  very  habit  of  even  nominally  professing  them,  was  a  safe- 
guard to  those  who  were  capable  of  it.  It  is  as  if  he  were 
conscious  of  one  check  less  upon  his  own  course  to  ruin  than 
even  ordinary  youths  around  him  had.  Nay  more,  said  at 
the  moment  at  which  they  were  said,  his  words  to  Catcott  are 
a  proof  that  the  writer  has  again  been,  for  some  reason  or  other, 
catechising  himself  on  the  subject  to  which  they  refer.  He 
has  been  turning  one  sarcastic  look  more,  as  it  were,  in  his 
depression  and  despair,  to  those  "comforts  of  Christianity" 
the  efficacy  of  which,  in  such  circumstances,  he  has  all  his  life 
heard  mentioned  ;  and  the  result  is,  that  he  finds  they  will  not 
suit  him  and  remits  them  to  Mr.  Catcott. 

Well,  but  was  there  no  equivalent  ?  If  the  Christian  has 
a  source  of  faith  and  hope  that  the  world  knows  not  of,  and 
that  bears  him  up,  as  nothing  else  could,  in  times  of  worldly 
distress  and  trial;  still  it  is  known  by  universal  experience,  that, 
in  such  times  of  worldly  distress  and  trial,  men  who  are  not 
Christians  do  not  uniformly  break  down.  That  fervid  and  im- 
passioned man  of  majestic  thought  and  gait,  people  do  not  call 
him  a  Christian ;  they  call  him  a  Pantheist  or  a  Philosopher, 
or  something  of  that  sort ;  and  yet,  were  he  at  his  last  shilling, 
or  his  last  crust,  were  the  rack  prepared  for  him  and  the  multi- 
tude howling  for  his  destruction,  every  one  knows  that  he  would 
endure  and  come  through !  Si fr actus  illabatur  orhts,  impavidum 
ferientruince.  He  believes  in  Justice,  and  God,  and  the  Ever- 
lasting !  Nay  more,  that  tough  little  fellow,  all  grey  iron  and 
scepticism,  whose  very  principle  it  is  that  there  is  no  Everlast- 
ing, and  that  men  ought  ''  to  apprehend  no  farther  than  this 


316  CHATTERTON: 

world,  and  square  their  lives  according;"  lie  too,  unless  his 
antecedents  belie  him,  might  be  beaten  a  long  time  between  any 
size  of  hammer  and  any  shape  of  anvil !  He,  too,  could  come 
through.  Why,  since  the  beginning  of  the  world,  people  have 
been  coming  through !  Quiet,  plain  scholars  have  lived,  before 
now,  in  German  or  in  Scotch  University  towns  on  boiled  peas- 
cods  for  months,  or  asingle  guinea  a  quarter  earned  by  teaching, 
without  saying  much  about  it.  Had  youths  of  this  type  been  in 
Chatterton's  place  in  London,  in  August,  1770,  they  would  have 
most  probably  survived  the  crisis.  They  would  have  availed 
themselves  gratefully,  and  yet  honestly,  of  such  small  imme- 
diate aid  as  those  aunts  and  other  relatives  that  we  hear  of  so 
slightly  in  Chatterton's  letters,  (one  of  them,  a  carpenter,  who 
had  married  one  of  his  aunts,)  might  perhaps,  though  poor, 
have  willingly  oiFered  at  the  sharpest  moment  of  the 
emergency ;  and,  even  failing  that,  they  would  have  conquered 
by  sheer  patience.  How  was  it,  then,  in  Chatterton's  case — the 
"  comforts  of  Christianity"  being  placed  out  of  the  question? 
Chatterton  never  would  call  himself  an  Atheist.  In  a  time 
when  Wilkes  and  other  contemporaries,  whose  language  he 
sometimes  borrowed,  carried  on  their  outrages  on  Christianity 
very  much  in  that  character,  Chatterton,  by  the  very  structure 
of  his  genius  as  a  boy  of  ardour  and  imagination,  retained 
something  in  him  of  a  poet's  reverence  for  the  sublime  and 
the  awful.  In  express  anticipation,  in  one  of  his  satirical 
poems,  of  the  stigma  of  Atheism,  he  says — 

"  Fallacious  is  the  charge;  'tis  all  a  lie, 
As  to  my  reason  I  can  testify. 
I  own  a  God,  immortal,  boundless,  wise, 
Who  bid  our  glories  of  Creation  rise; 
Who  form'd  his  varied  likeness  in  mankind, 
Centering  his  many  wonders  in  the  mind." 

And,  again,  m  one  more  solemn  soliloquy,  on  which  one 
dwells  with  peculiar  interest,  as  perhaps,  in  its  kind,  the 
highest  utterance  by  the  poor  boy  of  what  was  best  in  him, 
and  which  reminds  one  of  similar  bursts  of  natural  piety  in 
the  writings  of  Bums  and  Byron : — 

"  0  God,  whose  thunder  shakes  the  sky, 
Whose  eye  this  atom  globe  surveys. 
To  Thee,  my  only  rock,  I  fly, 
Thy  mercy  in  Thy  justice  praise. 


A  STORY  OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  317 

The  mystic  mazes  of  Thy  will, 

The  shadows  of  celestial  light, 
Are  past  the  power  of  human  skill; 

But  what  the  Eternal  acts  is  right. 

0  teach  me  in  the  trying  hour, 

When  anguish  swells  the  dewy  tear, 

To  still  my  sorrows,  own  thy  power, 
Thy  goodness  love,  thy  justice  fear ! 

If  in  this  bosom  aught  but  Thee 

Encroaching  sought  a  boundless  sway, 

Omniscience  could  the  danger  see, 
And  Mercy  look  the  cause  away. 

Then,  why,  my  soul,  dost  thou  complain? 

Why  drooping  seek  the  dark  recess  ? 
Shake  off  the  melancholy  chain. 

For  God  created  all  to  bless. 

But  ah !  my  breast  is  human  still; 

The  rising  sigh,  the  falling  tear. 
My  languid  vitals*  feeble  rill. 

The  sickness  of  my  soul  declare. 

But  yet,  with  fortitude  resign'd, 

I'll  thank  the  Inflicter  of  the  blow, 
Forbid  the  sigh,  compose  my  mind, 

Nor  let  the  gush  of  misery  flow. 

The  gloomy  mantle  of  the  night, 

Which  on  my  sinking  spirit  steals, 
Will  vanish  at  the  morning  light 

Which  God,  my  East,  my  Sim  reveals." 

Well  for  the  poor  fatherless  boy  had  this  mood  been  per- 
manent !  But,  at  the  time  of  his  extreme  need  these  comforts, 
even  of  such  natural  religion  as  he  had,  seem  to  have  taken 
their  flight  too,  and  left  him,  mocking  and  bitter,  face  to  face 
with  despair. 

Nor  had  Chatterton  the  resources  to  be  found  in  rectitude 
and  gentleness  of  mere  worldly  character.  Impetuous,  stormy, 
industrious,  and  energetic,  as  he  was^  there  was  still  in  him 
an  element  of  weakness  in  what  he  called  his  "  pride,"  as 
well  as  in  his  open  contempt  for  all  the  commoner  forms  of 
moral  principle.  Above  all,  he  had  in  him  the  conscious 
sense  of  a  past  imposture,  and  of  innumerable  minor  deceits 
practised  in  prosecuting  it.  Kowley,  once  the  darling  phantasm 
of  his  poetical  imagination,  now  dogged  him  as  a  hateful 
demon,  evoked  by  himself  from  the  world  of  spirits,  and  not 
to  be  laid  to  rest.  Wherever  he  moved,  and  in  whatever 
form  of  new  labour  or  distraction  he  engaged,  he  could  not 
look  back  over  his  shoulder,  but  there  was  to  be  seen  the 


318  CHATTERTON  : 

form  of  this  demon,  in  the  garb  of  a  Bristol  monk  of  the 
fifteenth  century,  with  his  hideous  old  face  under  a  cowl, 
grinning  and  gliding  after  him.  In  short,  whether  we  view 
Chatterton's  character  as  it  naturally  was,  or  those  recol- 
lections of  past  lies  and  deceits  with  which  he  had  burdened 
his  conscience  so  as  to  deprive  his  character  of  half  its  natu- 
ral force,  he  was  very  likely  to  endure  much,  and  yet  to  break 
down  at  a  point  where  others  in  the  same  circumstances  might 
have  found  longer  endurance  quite  possible. 

After  all,  however,  the  most  material  fact  in  the  case 
remains  to  be  told.  Physical  causes  were  at  work.  Bereft  of 
the  amount  of  actual  food,  and  of  other  comforts,  necessary, 
even  with  his  abstemious  habits,  to  keep  body  and  soul 
healthily  together ;  wandering  about  London  in  a  perpetual 
state  of  fever  and  excitement ;  returning  home  to  write  night 
after  night  without  rest  or  sleep — little  wonder  if  he  had  over- 
strained his  physical  capabilities,  and  if  brain  and  nerve 
began  to  fail  in  their  ofl&ce.  Whatever  taint  of  hereditary 
insanity  was  in  him,  derived  from  the  old  line  of  sextons  who 
had  jangled  in  past  generations  the  keys  of  St.  Mary's  Church 
in  Bristol,  and  walked  at  midnight  through  its  aisles,  and 
dug  the  graves  of  its  parishioners  ;  or  derived,  more  imme- 
diately, from  that  drunken,  wild-eyed  father,  whom  he  had 
never  seen,  but  who  used  to  tell  his  tavern-companions  that 
he  believed  in  Cornelius  Agrippa  the  necromancer — it  had 
now  at  last  come  out  in  a  way  not  to  be  mistaken.  From  his 
childhood,  there  had  been  symptoms  of  it — his  fits  of  weep- 
ing, his  sudden  paroxysms  of  passion,  his  long  reveries  when 
he  gazed  at  people  without  seeming  to  see  them,  his  frequent 
mutterings  aloud.  Not  till  now,  however,  had  these  traits 
passed  the  limits  of  what  could  be  considered  compatible  with 
sanity.  But  now,  almost  certainly,  these  limits  were  passed. 
Noticing  the  strange  haggard  lad  walking  about  the  streets, 
muttering  perhaps  to  himself,  or  making  sudden  gestures,  or 
looking  at  what  was  passing,  sometimes  vacantly,  and  some- 
times with  glances  unusually  keen  and  bright,  even  strangers 
could  not  but  follow  him  with  their  eyes,  and  wonder  who 
he  was  and  where  he  came  from.     Had  the  stranger  been  one 


A   STOEY   OF   THE   YEAR   1770.  319 

accustomed  to  the  ways  of  the  insane,  he  would  probahly  at 
once  have  pronounced  that  his  brain  was  affected.  And  had 
the  stranger  been  able,  with  this  idea  in  his  mind,  to  pursue 
his  inquiries  farther,  so  as  to  ascertain  what  peculiar  form  or 
species  of  insanity  had  taken  possession  of  him,  he  would 
have  found  that  it  was  that  form  which  physicians  recognise 
as  the  "  suicidal  tendency."  Physicians,  as  all  know,  do 
recognise  this  as  a  form  of  madness ;  and  though  they  allow 
that  a  perfectly  sane  man  may  commit  suicide  after  deliberate 
reasoning  on  the  point,  they  attribute  a  large  proportion  of 
suicides  to  the  action  of  a  certain  specific  impulse  which 
reason  cannot  overcome.  In  Chatterton's  case,  as  we  have 
seen,  there  had  been  premonitory  appearances  of  the  existence 
of  this  tendency.  The  idea  of  suicide  had  from  the  first  been 
familiar  to  him. 

Something  like  positive  proof  exists  that,  before  the  month 
of  August,  1770,  was  very  far  advanced,  Chatterton  was 
actually  in  the  specific  maniacal  condition  which  physicians 
recognise  as  capable  of  being  induced  by  circumstances  where 
there  is  a  predisposition.  The  landlady,  Mrs.  Angell,  who  had 
always  thought  him  odd,  said  that  towards  the  end  of  the 
time  during  which  she  knew  him,  she  "  did  not  think  he  was 
quite  right  in  his  mind."  Mr.  Cross  noticed  his  growing  rest- 
lessness and  the  sudden  fits  of  vacancy  and  silence  that  came 
upon  him  sometimes  when  he  was  talking  rapidly.  He  also 
noted,  though  he  did  not  put  the  right  interpretation  on  it  at  the 
time,  that  in  his  talks  about  medicine,  he  would  frequently  lead 
on  to  the  subject  of  poisons,  and  inquire  with  great  apparent 
interest  into  the  nature  and  effects  of  different  poisonous  drugs. 
Even  in  the  letter  to  Catcott  which  we  have  quoted,  we  seem 
to  see  traces  of  over-excitement  of  brain,  and  of  that  morbid 
spirit  of  hatred  to  persons  which  results  from  it.  Finally,  there 
is  a  story  of  a  letter  sent  by  him  to  his  mother,  on  or  about 
the  15th  of  August,  which  was  written  in  such  a  strain  as  to 
cause  her  very  great  anxiety.  This  letter — the  last  she  ever 
received  from  him — is  not  extant,  like  the  others ;  but  Mrs. 
Edkins,  the  wife  of  a  painter  and  glazier  in  Bristol,  who  lived 
long  afterwards  and  communicated  many  particulars  about 


320  ■  CHATTERTON: 

the  Chatterton  family,  distinctly  remembered  having  been  sent 
for  by  Mrs.  Chatterton  when  the  letter  was  received.  She  found 
Mrs.  Chatterton  "  in  tears  and  very  uneasy"  on  account  of 
the  contents  of  the  letter ;  and  particularly  on  account  of  one 
part  of  it,  in  which  he  told  her  a  strange  story  of  his  walking 
among  the  tombs  in  a  churchyard,  and  suddenly,  in  a  fit  of 
absent  meditation,  stumbling  into  an  open  grave.  "But," 
added  he,  in  his  humorous  way,  ''  it  was  not  the  quick  and 
the  dead  together,' '  for  he  found  the  sexton  under  him,  who 
was  digging  the  grave !  (Various  forms  of  this  story  have 
come  down,  one  of  which  fixes  the  churchyard  in  question  as 
having  been  that  of  •  St.  Pancras.)  Mrs.  Edkins  tried  to 
console  Mrs.  Chatterton  by  saying  it  was  only  *'  one  of  his 
reveries ;"  but  "  she  could  not  be  persuaded  to  consider  it 
otherwise  than  as  ominous." 

And  so  it  proved.  Barrett,  very  properly,  refused  to  give 
Chatterton  the  certificate  he  wanted  of  competence  for  the 
situation  of  surgeon's  mate  on  board  an  African  ship ;  and  the 
refusal  was  one  disappointment  the  more  added  to  those  which 
were  already  preying  upon  him.  His  misery  was  almost  at  its 
climax.  Cross,  renewing  his  invitations  to  him  to  come  and 
take  a  meal  with  him,  was  surprised  to  find  him  one  day  con- 
sent. That  evening  he  partook  of  a  supper  of  oysters  at 
Cross's  house,  and  was  observed,  as  Cross  afterwards  told 
Warton,  "to  eat  most  voraciously."  For  aught  that  we  know, 
it  was  the  last  meal  he  had.  On  the  22nd  of  August,  at  all 
events,  he  had  reached  that  extreme  beyond  which  our  fancies 
of  human  destitution  cannot  go.  On  that  day,  according  to 
Mrs.  AngelPs  account,  he  "came  home  in  a  great  passion  with 
the  baker's  wife,  who  had  refused  to  let  him  have  another  loaf 
till  he  had  paid  her  3s.  6d.  which  he  owed  her  previously." 
Whether  Mrs.  Angell  behaved  as  one  would  think  most  land- 
ladies in  such  circumstances  would  have  done,  it  is  hardly 
necessary  to  inquire.  To  know  that  a  poor  boy  was  starving 
under  her  roof,  and,  though  he  had  been  as  proud  as  Lucifer, 
not  to  find  means,  if  even  by  calling  in  the  police,  of  break- 
ing down  his  resolution  against  eating  at  her  expense,  might 
seem  an  incredible  heartlessness  in  the  worst  of  women. 


A   STORY   OF   THE   YEAR   1770.  321 

Probably  she  blamed  herself  much  afterwards ;  for  when,  some 
years  later,  Sir  Herbert  Croft  tried  to  find  her  out  and  ques- 
tion her  about  Chatterton,  he  could  never  see  her,  though  she 
still  lived  in  the  same  house,  and  he  called  many  times.     He 
ascertained  that  she  was  a  very  timid  woman,  whose  circum- 
stances were  such  that  she  regarded  every  unknown  visitor  as 
a  bailiiF  in  disguise,  or  some  one  meaning  her  harm ;    and 
hence,  if  not  from  a  dislike,  as  we  have  supposed,  to  be  farther 
questioned  about  her  mysterious  lodger  of  former  years,  she 
was  always  out  of  the  way.    From  all  that  we  can  gather,  how- 
ever, her  fault  was  less  want  of  kindliness  than  want  of  energy 
and  sense ;  and  probably,  if  we  knew  the  exact  facts  in  their 
exact  order,  her  conduct,  such  as  it  was,  might  seem  more 
explicable.    Her  neighbour,  Mrs.  Wolfe,  whom  Sir  Herbert 
Croft  did  see,  told  him  that  Mrs.  Angell  said  Chatterton  was 
in  a  moping  state  for  a  day  or  two;  and  that,  though  she  tried, 
she  could  not  prevail  upon  him  to  eat  anything.    She  certainly 
did  not  foresee  what  was  going  to  happen,  or  she  would  have 
made  greater  efforts.     The  refusal  of  the  baker's  wife,  on  the 
22nd,  had  broken  the  last  bond  that  kept  Chatterton  to  life. 
On  that  or  the  following  day,  hope,  patience,  and  all  force  of 
reason  finally  forsook  him  ;  and  he  was  secretly  bidding  fare- 
well to  the  world.     Strange  that  at  this  very  moment  some- 
thing was  happening  in  his  favour,  which,  had  he  but  known 
it,  might  even  then  have  roused  him  and  determined  him  to 
live.     The  Kev.  Dr.  Fry,  Head  of  St.  John's  College,  Oxford, 
had  by  some  means  or  other  seen  some  of  the  antique  Rowley 
Poems  which  had  been  circulating  in  Bristol,  and,  having  con- 
ceived an  unusual  desire  to  know  something  more  about  them 
and  their  authorship,  was  on  the  eve  of  setting  out  for  Bristol, 
to  make  inquiries  about  Chatterton,  whom  he  supposed  still  to 
be  there.     O  Dr.  Fry,  make  haste ;  set  out  at  once ;  life  or 
death  depends  upon  it !     Dr.  Fry,  not  knowing  what  we  now 
know,  takes  his  own  time,  and   lives  to  regret  it.     He  did 
make  the  journey,  but  it  was  too  late. 

On  the  23rd  of  August— the  day  was  Thursday  ;  the  morn- 
ing, according  to  the  old  weather-registers,  "  hazy,"  but  the 
day  "  fine"  —  Chatterton  "appeared  unusually  grave;"    and 

Y 


322  CHATTERTON  : 

Mrs.  Angell,  according  to  her  own  account,  given  while  she 
was  yet  accessible,  asked  him  "  What  ailed  him  ? ''  to  which 
he  answered  pettishly,  "Nothing,  nothing !  Why  do  you  ask?" 
This  is  all  that  is  recorded  of  that  day,  during  which  he  seems 
hardly  to  have  left  the  house.  On  the  morning  of  the  next 
day,  Friday,  the  24th  of  August — "  clouds,  sunshine,  and 
showers  at  intervals,"  is  the  description  of  the  day  in  the 
registers — he  "lay  in  bed  longer  than  usual"  (the  words  are 
Mrs.  Angell's)  ;  "  got  up  about  ten  o'clock,  and  went  out  with  a 
bundle  of  papers  under  his  arm,  which,  he  said,  'was  a  treasure 
to  any  one ;  but  there  were  so  many  fools  in  the  world  that  he 
would  put  them  into  a  place  of  safety,  lest  they  should  meet 
with  accident.'  "  He  walks,  as  usual,  with  this  bundle  under 
his  arm,  down  Brooke  Street ;  disappears  somewhere  about 
Holbom,  and  after  a  little  reappears  in  Brooke  Street,  and  calls 
at  Mr.  Cross's  shop.  "  He  called  on  me'' — is  Mr.  Cross's  state- 
ment— "  about  half-past  eleven  in  the  morning."  As  usual,  he 
talked  about  various  matters,  and  at  last,  probably  just  as  he 
was  going  away,  he  said  he  wanted  some  arsenic  for  an  expe- 
riment. Mr.  Cross,  Mr.  Cross,  before  you  go  to  your  drawer 
for  the  arsenic,  look  at  that  boy's  face  !  Look  at  it  steadily  ; 
look  till  he  quails  ;  and  then  leap  upon  him  and  hold  him  ! 
Mr.  Cross  does  not  look.  He  sells  the  arsenic  (yes,  '  sells ;^ 
for,  somehow,  during  that  walk  in  which  he  has  disposed  of 
the  bundle,  he  has  procured  the  necessary  pence) ;  and  lives 
to  repent  it.  Chatterton,  the  arsenic  in  his  pocket,  does  not 
return  to  his  lodging  immediately,  but  walks  about,  God  only 
knows  where,  through  the  vast  town.  "  He  returned,"  con- 
tinues Mrs.  Angell,  "  about  seven  in  the  evening,  looking  very 
pale  and  dejected ;  and  would  not  eat  anything,  but  sat  moping 
by  the  fire  with  his  chin  on  his  knees,  and  muttering  rhymes 
in  some  old  language  to  her."  After  some  hours,  "  he  got  up 
to  go  to  bed,"  and  '^  he  then  kissed  her — a  thing  he  had  never 
done  before."  Mrs.  Angell,  what  can  that  kiss  mean  ?  Detain 
the  boy  ;  he  is  mad  ;  he  is  not  fit  to  be  left  alone  ;  arouse  the 
whole  street  rather  than  let  him  go !  She  does  let  him  go, 
and  lives  to  repent  it.  "  He  then  went  up  stairs,"  she  says 
"  stamping  on  every  stair  as  he  went  slowly  up,  as  if  he  would 


lUldl 

J 


A   STORY    OF   THE   YEAR   1770.  323 

break  it."     She  hears  him  reach  his  room.     He  enters,  and 
locks  the  door  behind  him. 

The  Devil  was  abroad  that  night  in  the  sleeping  city.  Down 
narrow  and  squalid  courts  his  presence  was  felt,  where  savage 
men  clutched  miserable  women  by  the  throat,  and  the  neigh- 
bourhood was  roused  by  yells  of  murder,  and  the  barking  of 
dogs,  and  the  shrieks  of  children.  Up  in  wretched  garrets  his 
presence  was  felt,  where  solitary  mothers  gazed  on  their  infants 
and  longed  to  kill  them.  He  was  in  the  niches  of  dark 
bridges,  where  outcasts  lay  huddled  together,  and  some  of  them 
stood  up  from  time  to  time  and  looked  over  at  the  dim  stream 
below.  He  was  in  the  uneasy  hearts  of  undiscovered  forgers, 
and  of  ruined  men  plotting  mischief.  He  was  in  prison-cells, 
where  condemned  criminals  condoled  with  each  other  in 
obscene  songs  and  blasphemy.  What  he  achieved  that  night, 
in  and  about  the  vast  city,  came  duly  out  into  light  and  his- 
tory. But  of  all  the  spots  over  which  the  Black  Shadow 
hung,  the  chief,  for  that  night  at  least,  was  a  certain  undis- 
tinguished house  in  the  narrow  street  which  thousands  who 
now  dwell  in  London  pass  and  repass,  scarce  observing  it,  every 
day  of  their  lives,  as  they  go  and  come  along  the  thoroughfare 
of  Holborn.  At  the  door  of  one  house  in  that  quiet  street, 
the  horrid  Shape  watched ;  through  that  door  he  passed  in 
towards  midnight ;  and  from  that  door,  having  done  his  work, 
he  emerged  before  it  was  morning. 

On  the  morrow — Saturday,  the  25th  of  August — Mrs. 
Angell  noticed  that  her  lodger  did  not  come  down  at  the  time 
expected.  As  he  had  lain  longer  than  usual,  however,  on  the 
day  before,  she  was  not  alarmed.  But,  about  eleven  o'clock, 
her  husband  being  then  out,  and  Mrs.Wolfe  having  come  in, 
she  began  to  fear  that  something  might  be  the  matter ;  and 
she,  and  Mrs.Wolfe  went  up  stairs  and  knocked  at  the  door. 
They  listened  a  while,  but  there  was  no  answer.  They  then 
tried  to  open  the  door,  but  found  it  was  locked.  Being  then 
thoroughly  alarmed,  one  of  them  ran  down  stairs,  and  called 
a  man  who  chanced  to  be  passing  in  the  street,  to  come  and 
break  the  door  open.  The  man  did  so ;  and  on  entering  they 
found  the  floor  littered  with  small  pieces  of  paper,  and  Chat- 

y2 


324  CHATTERTON : 

terton  "  lying  on  the  bed,  with  his  legs  hanging  over,  quite 
dead/'  The  bed  had  not  been  lain  in.  The  man  took  up 
some  of  the  pieces  of  paper ;  and  on  one  of  them  he  read,  in 
deceased's  hand^vriting,  the  words,  "  I  leave  my  soul  to  its 
Maker,  my  body  to  my  mother  and  sister,  and  my  curse  to 

Bristol.     If  Mr.  Ca :"  the  rest  was  torn  off.     ''  The  man 

then  said,"  relates  Mrs.  Angell,  "  that  he  must  have  killed 
himself;  which  we  did  not  think  till  then.''  Mrs.  Wolfe  ran 
immediately  for  Mr.  Cross,  who  came,  and  was  the  first  to 
point  out  a  bottle  on  the  window  containing  arsenic  and  water. 
"  Some  of  the  bits  of  arsenic  were  between  his  teeth ;  "  so  that 
there  was  no  doubt  that  he  had  poisoned  himself.  The  man 
who  had  broken  open  the  door,  and  who  was  quite  unknown 
to  Mrs.  Angell  or  Mrs.  Wolfe,  then  went  away,  taking  some 
of  the  little  pieces  of  paper  with  him. 

An  inquest  was  held  on  the  body  at  the  Three  Crows 
public-house,  in  Brooke  Street,  on  Monday,  the  27th  of  August, 
before  Swinson  Carter,  Esq.,  Coroner,  and  the  following  jury : 
— Charles  Skinner,  —  Meres,  John  HoUier,  John  Park,  S. 
G.  Doran,  Henry  Dugdale,  G.  J.  Hillsley,  C.  Sheen,  E. 
Manley,  C.  Moore,  and  —  Nevett.  The  chief  witnesses 
examined  were  Mary  Angell,  the  landlady,  her  husband  Fred- 
erick Angell,  Mr.  Cross,  the  apothecary,  and  Mrs.Wolfe.  The 
facts  which  they  deponed  have  been,  each  and  all,  involved  in 
the  preceding  account."^     The  jury,  less  charitable  than  juries 

*  Readers  who  may  be  curious  to  see  the  notes  of  the  depositions  in  the 
exact  form  in  which  they  have  come  down  to  us,  will  find  them  in  Notes  and 
Queries,  Vol.  vii.  p.  138.  They  were  communicated  to  that  periodical  by  John 
Matthew  Gutch,  Esq.,  of  Worcester,  formerly  one  of  the  proprietors  of  Felix 
Farley's  Bristol  Journal,  and  a  resident  in  Bristol ;  the  possessor  of  a  large  collec- 
tion of  papers,  accumulated  by  himself  and  other  persons,  relating  to  Chatterton 
and  his  writings.  The  notes  are  communicated  by  Mr.  Gutch  as  "from  a  MS. 
copy  "  in  his  possession,  never  before  published.  Unfortunately  the  history  of 
this  "  MS.  copy"  is  not  traced.  Unfortunately,  we  say  ;  for  there  are  some  slight 
discrepancies  between  the  account  they  contain  and  other  accounts ;  which 
discrepancies  one  would  like  to  see  explained.  Thus,  in  the  printed  copy  in  the 
Notes  and  Queries,  the  heading  runs,  "Account  of  an  inquest  held  on,  &c.,  on 
Friday,  the  27th  of  August,  1770  ;"  whereas  the  27th  was  not  a  Friday,  but  a 
Monday.  Again,  in  Mrs.  Angell's  evidence,  as  given  in  these  MS.  notes,  the 
house  in  which  she  lived,  and  in  which  Chatterton  died,  is  made  to  be  17, 
Brooke  Street,  instead  of  4,  Brooke  Street,  as  the  general  tradition  had  always 
ran  till  Mr.  Gutch  published  the  notes.  No.  17,  unless  the  numbering  hai 
been  changed,  would  have  been  at  the  inner  or  meaner  end  of  Brooke  Street 
close  to  the  market ;  but  no  corresponding  house  can  now  be  pointed  out  there 
Farther,  Sir  Herbert  Croft,  who,  among  his  other  attempts    about  the  ye£ 


A   STORY   OF   THE   YEAR   1770.  325 

now-a-days,  returned  a  verdict  of  Felo  de  se.  In  accordance 
with  this  verdict,  the  body,  having  been  enclosed  in  a  parish- 
shell,  was  privately  interred,  the  following  day,  in  the 
burying-ground  attached  to  Shoe  Lane  Workhouse.  This 
appears  from  the  entry  of  the  burial,  under  the  date  August 
28th,  in  the  parish-registers  of  St.  Andrew's,  Holborn,  the 
parish  in  which  Brooke  Street  is  situated,  and  the  church  and 
consecrated  churchyard  of  which  are  close  to  Shoe  Lane.  Mr. 
Peter  Cunningham  notices,  as  a  coincidence,  that  the  same 
parish-registers  contain  the  entry  of  the  baptism  of  Eichard 
Savage,  on  the  18th  of  January,  1696-7  ;  and  he  enhances  the 
curiosity  of  the  coincidence  by  remarking  that  Savage  was 
born  in  Fox  Court,  Brooke  Street,  close  to  the  house  where 
Chatterton  died,  and  died  in  1743,  in  the  jail  of  the  very  city 
of  Bristol,  where,  nine  years  later,  Chatterton  was  born. 
Brooke  Street  and  Bristol  exchanged  their  poets ! 

Whether  Chatterton's  body  remained  in  the  Shoe  Lane 
burying-ground,  to  be  torn  up,  with  the  bodies  of  other 
paupers,  fifty  years  afterwards,  when  Farringdon  Market 
usurped  the  site,  is  a  point  on  which  a  question  has  been  raised. 

Li  or  about  the  year  1808,  George  Cumberland,  Esq., 
"descendant  of  Bishop  Cumberland,  and  a  literary  and  highly 
respectable  man,"  was  informed  by  Sir  Eobert  Wilmot  that 
at  a  basket-maker's  in  Bristol,  whose  name  Sir  Robert  had 
forgotten,  he  had  heard  it  positively  stated  that  Chatterton  was 
buried  in  the  churchyard  of  St.  Mary  Eedcliffe.     Sir  Eobert 

1789  to  ascertain  as  much  about  the  cu-cumstances  of  Chatterton's  death  aa 
possible,  had  taken  care  to  see  the  coroner,  found  that  he  "  had  no  minutes  ot 
the  melancholy  business,"  and  had  but  a  vague  recollection  of  it  at  that  distance 
of  time  ;  but  was  informed  by  him,  on  the  evidence  of  such  "memorandum  as 
he  had,  that  the  witnesses  were  Frederick  Angell,  Mary  ^osf^^'  «^^^J^'"^«^ 
Hamsley.  Probably,  if  we  could  trace  the  history  of  Mr.  Gutch  s  MS  these  dis- 
crepancies would  be  explained  without  affecting  its  perfect  authenticity,  in  all 
other  respects,  the  statements  in  the  MS.  are  singularly  in  accordance  with  the 
independent  accounts  obtained  by  Sir  Herbert  Croft  Warton&c.,  from  Mrs 
Wolfe,  Mr.  Cross,  &c.  Accordingly,  though  we  have  followed  the  authority  ot 
this  MS.  to  the  utmost  extent  in  which  we  could  recognise  it  as  authentic,  the 
only  effect  it  has  had  upon  our  narrative  has  been  to  ^dd^^f^^^^^^^^i^S  Parti- 
culars, especially  in  connexion  with  the  closing  days  of  Chatterton  «  l^^^^  yb^^^ 
otherwise  would  have  been  wanting.  With  ^^^\Z'%'7'y!'^Znhl2ed 
substantially  the  same  as  it  would  have  been  had  Mr.  Gutch  not  publishea 
his  document,  but  left  us  to  the  old  sources  of  information. 


326  CHATTERTON : 

farther  said  that  the  statement  was  made  to  him  in  such  a 
manner  that  he  believed  it.  Mr.  Cumberland  thereupon 
instituted  inquiries  in  Bristol,  so  as  to  ascertain  the  truth  of 
the  story.  For  some  time  he  could  find  no  one  who  knew 
anything  of  the  matter  ;  but  at  last  he  traced  the  information 
given  to  Sir  Eobert  Wilmot,  to  a  Mrs.  Stockwell,  the  wife  of 
a  basket-maker  in  Peter  Street.  Questioned  on  the  subject, 
she  stated  that,  when  a  girl  (apparently  after  Chatterton's 
death),  she  had  been  a  pupil  of  Mrs.  Chatterton's,  and  that  she 
used  to  be  frequently  with  her  till  she  was  twenty  years  old ; 
that  often  she  stayed  with  Mrs.  Chatterton  and  slept  with  her ; 
that  she  was  "  very  kind  and  motherly,"  and  told  her  many 
things  she  would  not  tell  to  others — among  others,  "  how 
happy  she  was  that  her  unfortunate  boy  was  brought  home 
and  buried  in  E-edcliffe.'^  This  had  been  done,  she  said, 
"  through  the  attention  of  a  relative  in  London,  who,  after  the 
body  had  been  cased  in  a  parish-shell,  had  it  secured  and  sent 
to  her  by  the  waggon."  When  the  case  arrived  and  was 
opened,  the  body  was  found  "  black  and  half-putrid  ;"  it  was, 
therefore,  interred  immediately — this  being  done  secretly  by 
Phillips,  the  sexton,  who  was  a  friend  of  the  family,  and 
extremely  fond  of  Chatterton.  Mrs.  Stockwell  farther  stated 
that  the  grave  was  "  on  the  right  hand  side  of  the  lime-tree, 
in  the  middle  paved-walk  in  RedclifFe  churchyard,  about 
twenty  feet  from  the  father's  grave,  which  was  in  the  paved- 
walk,  and  where  Mrs.  Chatterton  and  Mrs.  Newton  also  lay." 
She  also  recollected  that  Mrs.  Chatterton  had  given  leave 
to  a  person  named  Hutchinson  or  Taylor  (she  could  not  be 
sure  which)  to  bury  his  child  over  her  son's  coffin ;  and  was 
very  sorry  afterwards  that  she  had  done  so,  as  this  person  had 
not  only  put  a  stone  over  the  grave  which  had  formerly 
belonged  to  it,  but  had  been  removed  and  placed  against  the 
church- wall,  but  had  also  subsequently  buried  his  wife  in  the 
same  grave,  and,  on  that  occasion,  erased  the  old  inscription 
on  the  stone  to  make  room  for  a  new  one.  This  was  all  that 
Mrs.  Stockwell  could  tell ;  but  she  mentioned  to  Mr.  Cumber- 
land that  there  was  a  Mrs.  Kirkland,  the  wife  of  a  Scotch 
naval  man,  who  had  formerly  resided  in  Bristol,  and  been  on 


A  STORY   OF  THE   YEAR  1770.  327 

such  very  intimate  terms  with  Mrs.  Chatterton  in  her  old  age 
that  she  was  hkely  to  know  all  about  the  burial.  Cumberland, 
on  inquiry,  found  that  this  Mrs.  Kirkland  had  died  about  three 
months  before,  leaving  a  daughter  somewhere  in  London, 
whom  he  could  not  trace.  But  Mrs.  Stockwell  referred  him 
to  *'a  hatter's  wife"  (name  not  given)  who  remembered 
Mrs.  Kirkland,  and  had  often  heard  her  say  that  Chatterton 
was  privately  buried  in  EedclifFe  churchyard.  To  make  the 
matter  more  sure,  Mr.  Cumberland  sought  out  the  family  of 
the  sexton  Phillips,  who  had  himself  died  in  1772.  He  found 
his  sister,  a  Mrs.  Jane  Phillips,  still  alive ;  and  she  told  him 
that  she  had  known  Chatterton  well,  and  that  her  brother,  the 
sexton,  whom  Chatterton  used  to  call  "  uncle,"  was  much 
attached  to  the  family.  It  was  her  brother  that  first  told  her 
the  news  of  Chatterton' s  having  killed  himself  in  London  ; 
and,  on  hearing  it,  she  had  gone,  against  her  brother's  wish,  to 
Mrs.  Chatterton,  in  order  to  know  more  about  it.  She  asked 
Mrs.  Chatterton  where  her  son  was  buried ;  and  she  replied, 
"Ask  me  nothing;  he  is  dead  and  buried."  A  daughter  of 
the  sexton's,  now  Mrs.  Stephens,  the  wife  of  a  cabinet-maker, 
was  also  found  by  Cumberland  and  interrogated.  She  said 
her  father  had  never  told  her  anything  of  the  burial  in 
Kedcliffe  churchyard ;  and  ''  if  he  had  done  it  privately,  it  was 
not  likely  that  he  would  tell  her,  being  very  reserved  on  all 
occasions;"  but  she  thought  ''he  would  not  have  refused,  if 
asked,  being  attached  to  Chatterton  and  his  mother."  She 
remembered  the  removal  of  a  stone  from  the  church- wall,  and 
the  erasure  of  the  old  inscription  to  make  room  for  a  new  one, 
by  a  person  named  Hutchinson,  whose  wife  had  died.  A 
brother  of  this  Mrs.  Stephens,  a  son  of  the  sexton,  and  named 
Stephen  Chatterton  Phillips,  was  also  seen  by  Cumberland. 
He  was  then  a  retired  sailor  with  a  wooden  leg,  and  was  said 
to  have  some  resemblance  to  Chatterton  in  the  face.  He  but 
corroborated  what  his  sister  had  said;  that  is,  he  knew 
nothing  of  the  burial,  and  "  his  father  was  not  likely  to  tell 
him,  and  yet  might  have  done  it."  Finally,  Cumberland  saw 
Mrs.  Edkins,  already  mentioned  as  having  been  so  intimate 
with  Mrs.  Chatterton.     As  a  Miss  James,  she  had  been  at  the 


328  CHATTERTON  : 

school  kept  by  Chatterton^s  father,  whom  she  remembered 
well ;  she  had  known  Mrs.  Chatterton  then,  and  had  been 
present  afterwards  at  the  birth  of  her  son ;  and  from  the  time 
of  his  birth,  all  through  his  school-boy  period  and  his 
apprenticeship  with  Mr.  Lambert,  till  he  went  to  London,  she 
had  been  continually  seeing  him  and  his  mother.  Some  of 
the  most  interesting  particulars  of  Chatterton's  early  life  were 
procured  from  her.  As  to  the  private  burial,  however,  she 
was  unable  to  say  anything.  She  had  gone  to  see  Mrs. 
Chatterton  immediately  after  the  news  came  of  her  son's 
death.  On  entering,  she  found  Mrs.  Chatterton  in  a  fit  of 
hysterics.  She  said  she  had  come  to  ask  about  her  health. 
"  Ay,"  said  Mrs.  Chatterton,  "  and  about  something  else ;"  on 
which  she  burst  into  tears,  and  they  cried  together,  and  "  no 
more  was  said  till  they  parted."" 

All  these  facts,  collected  by  Cumberland  about  1808,  were 
given  to  him  by  Cromek,  the  editor  of  "  Burns's  Reliques,"  who 
undertook  to  make  farther  researches  and  publish  them.  This 
was  not  done ;  and  Cumberland's  memoranda  did  not  see  the 
light  till  they  were  printed  as  an  appendix  to  Mr.  Dix's  Life 
of  Chatterton  in  1851.  Since  that  date  they  have  received  one 
slight  corroboration.  In  the  "  Memorials  of  Canynge,  &c.," 
published  in  1854  by  Mr.  George  Pryce,  a  Bristol  anti- 
quary, there  is  a  short  account  of  Chatterton ;  and  in  that 
account  is  included  a  letter  written  in  1853,  by  the  late  well- 
known  Mr.  Joseph  Cottle,  of  Bristol,  in  which  he  states  his 
belief  that  Chatterton  was  buried  in  KedclifFe  churchyard. 
His  reasons  for  the  belief  are  thus  stated : — "  About  forty 
years  ago,  Mr.  George  Cumberland  called  upon  me  and  said, 
*  I  have  ascertained  one  important  fact  about  Chatterton.' 
'  What  is  it?'  I  said.  *  It  is,'  said  he,  '  that  that  marvellous 
boy  was  buried  in  Redcliffe  churchyard.'  He  continued  :  '  I 
am  just  come  from  conversing  with  old  Mrs.  Edkins,  a 
friend  of  Chatterton's  mother.  She  affirmed  to  me  this  fact, 
with  the  following  explanation  :' — '  Mrs.  Chatterton  was  pas- 
sionately fond  of  her  darling  and  only  son,  Thomas ;  and 
when  she  heard  that  he  had  destroyed  himself,  she  im- 
mediately wrote  to  a  relation  of  hers  (the  poet's  uncle,  then 


A  STORY  OF  THE  YEAR  1770.  329 

residing  in  London),  a  carpenter,  urging  him  to  send  home  his 
body  in  a  coffin  or  box.  The  box  was  accordingly  sent  down 
to  Bristol ;  and  when  I  called  on  my  friend  Mrs.  Chatterton  to 
condole  with  her,  she,  as  a  very  great  secret,  took  me  upstairs 
and  showed  me  the  box ;  and  removing  the  lid,  I  saw  the  poor 
boy,  whilst  his  mother  sobbed  in  silence.  She  told  me  that 
she  should  have  him  taken  out  in  the  middle  of  the  night,  and 
bury  him  in  Kedcliffe  churchyard.  Afterwards,  when  I  saw 
her,  she  said  she  had  managed  it  very  well,  so  that  none  but 
the  sexton  and  his  assistant  knew  anything  about  it.  This 
secrecy  was  necessary,  as  he  could  not  be  buried  in  conse- 
crated ground.'  "  Mr.  Cottle  adds,  that  he  knew  the  husband 
of  Mrs.  Edkins,  who  was  a  respectable  painter  and  glazier. 

There  is  some  difference,  it  will  be  observed,  between  the 
account  given  in  Mr.  Cumberland's  surviving  memoranda  and 
that  given  by  Mr.  Cottle  as  his  recollection  of  what  Mr.  Cum- 
berland had  told  him.  In  the  one,  Mrs.  Edkins  says  nothing 
whatever  about  the  private  burial ;  in  the  other,  she  makes  the 
detailed  statement  just  quoted.  Either,  then,  Mr.  Cumberland 
had  seen  Mrs.  Edkins  a  second  time  and  got  from  her  parti- 
culars which  she  had  not  thought  fit  to  communicate  in  1808, 
or  there  was  a  confusion  between  Mrs.  Edkins  and  Mrs. 
Stcckwell  in  Mr.  Cottle's  memory.  On  the  whole,  one  would 
wish  to  believe  the  account,  and  to  fancy  the  poor  boy's  bones 
resting  quietly  within  the  hallowed  precincts  he  loved  so  well, 
and  where,  since  1840,  the  piety  of  Bristol  has  raised  him 
a  modest  monument. 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE   JUDGMENT   OE   POSTERITY. 

Chatterton's  death  made  very  little  sensation  in  London, 
beyond  the  immediate  neighbourhood  in  which  the  inquest 
was  held.  We  have  looked  over  the  newspapers  of  the  time 
with  some  diligence ;  but,  though  paragraphs  giving  accounts 
of  such  casualties  were  as  common  then  as  now,  we  have  not 
found  the  slightest  reference  to  the  suicide  in  Brooke  Street. 


330  CHATTERTON  : 

The  incident  which  figures  in  the  newspapers  as  the  chief 
metropolitan  fact  of  the  day  on  which  the  suicide  occurred — 
i.  e.  the  24th  of  August — is  the  robbery  at  the  foot  of  High- 
gate  Hill,  by  "a  tall  thin  man  in  a  light-coloured  coat, 
mounted  on  a  black  horse,"  of  the  boy  carrying  the  Chester 
mail.  Under  the  same  date  is  recorded,  as  a  somewhat  minor 
incident,  a  visit  paid  by  their  Majesties  to  Woolwich  to  see 
the  artillery.  .  Even  the  Town  and  Country  Magazine^  which 
came  out,  on  the  31st  of  August,  with  three  contributions  in 
it  from  the  pen  of  the  unfortunate  youth  who  was  now  no 
more,  (and  one  of  these  the  article  on  sculpture  to  accompany 
the  engraved  design  for  Beckford's  monument,)  takes  no  notice 
in  its  "  Domestic  Intelligence  "  of  the  death  of  its  correspond- 
ent. Doubtless,  Hamilton  knew  the  fact  in  time  to  notice  it 
if  he  chose ;  but  he  may  have  known  also  the  reference  made 
to  himself  in  Cross's  evidence  at  the  inquest.  Nor,  in  the 
September  number,  which  likewise  contains  some  of  Chatter- 
ton's  writings,  is  the  omission  supplied.  It  is  not  till  the 
October  number  that  any  notice  of  Chatterton  occurs;  and 
then  it  is  in  the  form  of  an  elegy  in  twenty-three  stanzas, 
"  To  the  Memory  of  Mr.  Thomas  Chatterton,  late  of  Bristol." 
The  elegy  is  dated  "  Bristol,  October,  1770,"  and  is  signed 
"  T.  C.^^ — evidently  the  initials  of  Chatterton' s  friend,  Thomas 
Cary.  The  elegy  is  written  with  more  of  genuine  affection 
than  of  poetry ;  but  two  stanzas  may  be  quoted : — 

"  Think  of  his  tender  opening  unfledged  years, 
Brought  to  a  final  crisis  ere  mature, 
As  Fate  had  grudged  the  wonders  Nature  rears, 
Bright  genius  in  oblivion  to  immure. 

Weep,  Nature,  weep  :  the  mighty  loss  bewail ;  — 

The  wonder  of  our  drooping  isle  is  dead ! 
Oh  !  could  but  tears  or  plaintive  sighs  avail. 

By  night  and  day  would  I  bedew  my  bed." 

In  consequence,  however,  of  such  communications  as  these 
sent  from  Bristol,  and  of  the  naturally  increased  interest  that 
there  would  be  there  among  the  Catcotts  and  the  Barretts  in 
the  Rowley  manuscripts  and  other  papers  that  Chatterton  had 
left  behind  him  ;  perhaps,  too,  of  the  researches  of  Dr.  Fry  and 
others  who  obtained  copies  of  these  papers  and  began  to  send 


A   STORY   OF   THE   YEAR   1770.  331 

them  about ;  and,  doubtless,  to  some  extent  also,  of  tbe  casual 
references  to  Chatterton's  fate  that  would  be  made  by  persons 
who  had  seen  him  in  town — it  is  certain  that  before  the  winter 
of  1770 — 1  was  far  advanced,  the  tragic  death  in  the  previous 
August  of  a  certain  youth  of  genius  named  Chatterton,  a 
writer  for  the  Magazines,  and  the  alleged  editor  and  tran- 
scriber of  various  pieces  of  ancient  poetry,  had  become  a 
topic  of  conversation  in  the  literary  clubs  of  London. 

This  was  especially  the  case  at  the  Gerard  Street  Club. 
Goldy  had  returned  from  his  Parisian  trip  before  the  8th  of 
September — on  which  day,  his  biographer,  Mr.  Forster,  finds 
him  receiving  a  new  suit  of  mourning  from  his  tailor,  to  be 
worn  on  account  of  the  death  of  his  old  mother,  of  which  he 
had  received  the  news  when  in  Paris.  Johnson  was  also  back 
in  town  before  September  was  over.  One  of  the  two — most 
probably  it  was  Goldy — having  seen  the  Elegy  in  the  Town  and 
Country  for  October,  or  otherwise  coming  across  the  story  of 
Chatterton,  made  himself  acquainted  with  the  particulars; 
and  thus  Chatterton  and  the  Eowley  Poems  came  to  be 
discussed  at  the  Club.  By  this  means  it  probably  was  that 
the  Honourable  Horace  Walpole  unexpectedly  found  himself, 
one  day  early  in  1771,  reminded  of  his  Bristol  correspondent 
of  the  year  1769.  The  occasion  of  his  doing  so  was  in  itself 
a  somewhat  memorable  one.  The  first  annual  dinner  of  the 
Eoyal  Academy  was  held  on  St.  George's  Day  (April  23d), 
1771.  At  this  dinner  Sir  Joshua  Keynolds  presided ;  and 
among  the  guests  who  sat  under  the  pictures  which  were 
hung  along  the  walls,  were  almost  all  the  distinguished  men 
of  London.  Walpole,  who  was  not  in  the  habit  of  seeing 
much  of  Johnson,  Goldsmith,  and  that  set  elsewhere,  found 
himself  seated  near  to  them.  We  will  let  himself  relate  the 
rest.  ''Dining,"  he  says,  "at  the  Koyal  Academy,  Doctor 
Goldsmith  drew  the  attention  of  the  company  with  an  account 
of  a  marvellous  treasure  of  ancient  poems  lately  discovered  at 
Bristol,  and  expressed  enthusiastic  belief  in  them,  for  which 
he  was  laughed  at  by  Dr.  Johnson,  who  was  present.  I  soon 
found  this  was  the  trouvaille  of  my  friend  Chatterton ;  and 
I  told  Dr.  Goldsmith  that  this  novelty  was  known  to  me, 


332  CHATTERTON  : 

who  might,  if  I  had  pleased,  have  had  the  honour  of  ushering 
the  great  discovery  to  the  learned  world.  You  may  imagine, 
Sir,  we  did  not  all  agree  in  the  measure  of  our  faith ;  but 
though  his  credulity  diverted  me,  my  mirth  was  soon  dashed ; 
for,  on  asking  about  Chatterton,  he  told  me  he  had  been  in 
London  and  had  destroyed  himself.  The  persons  of  honour 
and  veracity  who  were  present  will  attest  with  what  surprise 
and  concern  I  thus  first  heard  of  his  death."  Said  we  not 
that,  of  all  the  literary  men  then  alive,  the  one  that  it  might 
have  been  best  for  Chatterton  to  have  near  him,  in  his  hour  of 
despair,  was  Oliver  Goldsmith  ?  We  see  that,  after  Chatterton 
was  dead,  Goldsmith  was  somehow  the  first  to  hear  of  his 
fate  and  to  talk  about  it. 

From  that  time,  for  the  next  six  or  seven  years,  we  are  to 
fancy  the  interest  in  the  Rowley  Poems,  and  in  Chatterton  as 
connected  with  them,  gradually  increasing.  Catcott,  as 
possessor  of  the  greater  portion  of  Chatterton's  transcripts  of 
the  supposed  ancient  poems,  has  become  a  person  of  some 
consequence  in  the  eyes  of  local  antiquarians,  and  he  takes 
care  to  make  the  most  of  it.  He  has  already  increased  his 
stock  of  MSS.  by  buying  from  Chatterton's  mother,  for  five 
guineas,  such  of  his  papers  as  had  been  left  with  her, — a 
proceeding  by  no  means  to  his  credit,  when  we  know  that 
about  the  same  time  he  offered  to  sell  his  own  collection  for 
70L  Barrett,  too,  as  the  possessor  of  some  copies  of  the 
supposed  antiques,  finds  himself  inquired  after.  Both  he  and 
Catcott  lend  about  copies  of  their  manuscripts,  some  frag- 
ments of  which  get  into  print.  The  Bristol  poems  of  the 
fifteenth  century  are  frequently  spoken  of  in  literary  circles  in 
London.  Warton,  for  example,  was  shown  a  collection  of 
them  in  1773  by  the  Earl  of  Lichfield,  who  asked  his  opinion 
of  their  genuineness.  All  sensible  persons  who  had  seen 
specimens  had  already  made  up  their  minds  that  they  were 
forgeries ;  but  many  antiquarian  old  women  stoutly  main- 
tained the  contrary.  Whenever  a  literary  man  from  the 
metropolis  was  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Bristol,  he  endea- 
voured, as  a  matter  of  course,  to  see  Catcott  and  Barrett,  and 
to  get  all  the  particulars  from  them  about  Chatterton  and 


A   STORY   OF   THE   YEAR   1770.  333 

his  circumstances.  They  were  very  communicative  on  this 
subject,  and  spoke  of  Chatterton's  talents,  now  that  they  had 
a  kind  of  property  in  them,  far  more  enthusiastically  than 
they  had  done  when  he  was  alive;  but  they,  and  indeed 
nearly  all  Bristol,  persisted  in  believing  in  the  genuineness  of 
the  antiques.  Chatterton,  they  said,  was  a  youth  of  extra- 
ordinary genius ;  but  he  could  not  have  produced  such  poems 
as  these  were!  They  were,  they  had  no  doubt  of  it,  the 
works  of  the  much  older  Bristol  poet,  Thomas  Kowley; 
mysteriously  preserved  for  three  hundred  years  in  the  old 
chests  in  the  muniment-room  of  St.  Mary  Kedcliffe,  and  only 
brought  to  light  by  Chatterton!  Thus,  when  in  April  1776 
Johnson  and  Boswell  paid  a  visit  to  Bristol,  they  saw  Catcott 
and  Barrett,  and  were  shown  the  original  MSS.  Johnson, 
says  Boswell,  read  some  of  them  aloud,  while  Catcott  stood 
by  with  open  mouth,  amazed  at  his  scepticism ;  after  which, 
Catcott,  to  settle  the  matter,  led  them  in  triumph  to  the 
Church  of  St.  Mary  Kedcliffe,  and,  by  way  of  unanswerable 
argument,  showed  them  "the  chest  itself."  It  was  on  this 
occasion  that  Johnson  said  to  Boswell,  speaking  of  Chatterton, 
"  This  is  the  most  extraordinary  young  man  that  has  encoun- 
tered my  knowledge.  It  is  wonderful  how  the  whelp  has 
written  such  things."  In  connexion  with  this  same  visit,  it 
may  be  interesting  to  state  that  Hannah  More,  who  was  still 
residing  in  Bristol  with  her  sisters,  a  young  woman  of  twenty- 
five,  at  the  time  of  Chatterton's  death,  had,  between  that  time 
and  Dr.  Johnson's  visit  in  1776,  added  to  the  literary  reputation 
of  Bristol  by  the  publication  of  her  first  dramas.  In  visiting 
Bristol,  Johnson  was  paying  a  compliment  to  this  rising 
poetess,  as  well  as  to  the  memory  of  Chatterton.  One  is  glad 
to  know  also  that,  if  Hannah  More,  as  one  of  the  conductors 
of  the  best  boarding-school  for  young  ladies  in  Bristol,  was 
almost  necessarily  out  of  the  circle  of  Chatterton's  acquaint- 
ances, while  he  was  going  about  in  the  city  as  an  attorney's 
apprentice,  she  was  one  of  the  first  in  Bristol  to  sliow  an 
interest  in  his  fate  after  she  did  hear  of  him,  and  to  prove 
that  interest  by  being  kind  to  his  mother  and  sister.  Mrs. 
Chatterton,  after  her  son's  death,  was  seized  with  a  nervous 


334  CHATTERTON  : 

illness,  which,  though  she  lived  a  good  many  years  longer, 
never  left  her ;  and  among  those  who  used  to  go  to  see  her 
and  sometimes  take  tea  with  her,  for  her  dead  son's  sake, 
there  was  none,  Mrs.  Stockwell  said,  whom  she  respected  so 
much  as  Miss  More. 

It  was  in  1777  that  the  Rowley  Poems  were  first  published 
collectively,  chiefly  from  the  manuscripts  in  possession  of 
Catcott  and  Barrett.  A  second  and  more  splendid  edition 
was  published  in  1782  by  Dean  Milles,  President  of  the 
Society  of  Antiquaries,  with  the  following  title : — "  Poems 
supposed  to  have  been  written  at  Bristol  in  the  Fifteenth 
Century,  hy  Thomas  Rowley,  Priest,  &c.  ;  with  a  Commentary, 
in  which  the  antiquity  of  them  is  considered  and  defended  hy 
Jeremiah  Milles,  D.D.,  Dean  of  Exeter, ^^  Dean  Milles,  in  his 
preliminary  dissertation  on  the  poems,  gave  a  very  slight 
account  of  Chatterton,  with  a  view  to  show  that  he  could  not 
have  been  their  author.  Immediately  on  the  publication 
of  the  volume,  there  blazed  out  a  Rowley  controversy,  as 
fierce  as  that  which  had  attended  the  appearance  of  the 
Ossian  poems.  Bryant  and  one  or  two  others  sided  with 
Milles ;  and  the  question  was  argued  and  re-argued  in 
every  shape ;  but  all  the  great  critical  and  antiquarian 
authorities,  such  as  Malone,  Tyrwhitt,  and  Warton,  were  on 
the  other  side,  and  their  arguments,  from  evidence  external 
and  internal,  set  the  question  conclusively  at  rest  in  the 
minds  of  all  who  could  be  set  at  rest  about  anything.  The 
collection  and  publication  about  the  same  time  of  Chat- 
terton's  acknowledged  miscellanies,  helped  somewhat  in  the 
demonstration,  by  showing  the  possibility  that  their  author 
might  also  have  been  the  author  even  of  things  so  extra- 
ordinary as  the  Rowley  Poems.  It  was  not  till  1803, 
however,  that  the  two  sets  of  pieces  were  printed,  together 
with  additions,  as  the  undoubted  works  of  Chatterton.  This 
first  complete  edition  of  Chatterton's  works  was  undertaken 
in  1799  by  subscription,  with  a  view  to  raise  a  sum  for  the 
benefit  of  his  sister,  then  Mrs.  Newton  ;  his  mother  being  by 
that  time  dead.  Mr.  Southey  and  Mr.  Cottle  of  Bristol  acted 
as  the  editors.     The  subscription,  however,  not  reaching  the 


A   STORY   OF   THE    YEAR   1770.  335 

expenses  of  publication,  an  arrangement  was  made  with 
Messrs.  Longman  in  the  interest  of  Mrs.  Newton.  According 
to  what  Mr.  Cumberland  heard  in  Bristol  in  1808,  the 
result  of  this  speculation,  and  of  other  similar  acts  of  kind- 
ness shown  to  the  Chatterton  family  since  the  fatal  year 
which  had  made  them  immortal,  was  that  a  sum  of  about 
600/.  came  after  Mrs.  Newton's  death  to  her  only  daughter, 
who  had  for  some  time  been  in  the  service  of  Miss  Hannah 
More.  This  girl,  the  last  of  the  Chattertons,  died  in  1807, 
leaving  100/.  to  a  young  man,  an  attorney,  to  whom  she  was 
about  to  be  married.  The  rest  went  to  her  father's  rela- 
tives, the  Newtons,  living  in  London  somewhere  about  the 
Minories. 

We  have  already  quoted  enough  from  Chatterton' s  acknow- 
ledged writings  in  prose  and  in  verse,  to  give  an  idea  of  his 
ability  and  versatility  as  there  shown.  They  are  certainly 
astonishing  productions  for  a  boy  not  past  his  eighteenth 
year ;  astonishing  for  their  very  variety,  and  their  pre- 
cocious tone  and  manner,  even  where  in  substance  they 
are  most  worthless.  He  writes  political  letters  for  the 
newspapers,  shallow  enough,  but  as  good  as  were  going ;  he 
writes  scurrilous  satires  in  the  Churchill  vein,  with  here  and 
there  lines  as  good  as  any  in  Churchill,  and  sometimes  with 
turns  of  epigram  reminding  us  of  Pope;  he  writes  very 
tolerable  imitations  of  Ossian,  and  elegies,  and  serious  poems 
showing  some  power  both  of  thought  and  imagination ;  he 
catches  the  knack  of  magazine-articles,  and  scribbles  them 
off,  currente  calamo,  exactly  of  a  kind  to  suit ;  he  goes  an 
evening  or  two  to  Marylebone  Gardens,  and  straightway  he 
writes  a  capital  burletta.  On  the  evidence,  then,  of  his 
acknowledged  productions  alone,  Chatterton  must  be  pro- 
nounced to  have  been  a  youth  of  singular  endowments,  who, 
had  he  lived,  would  certainly  have  made  himself  a  name  in 
the  literature  of  England  at  the  close  of  the  last  and  the 
beginning  of  the  present  century.  The  passages  which  we 
have  hitherto  quoted  from  these  productions  having,  however, 
been  selected  mainly  as  affording  illustrations  of  his  character 


336  CHATTERTON : 

and  life,  it  may  be  well  to  cite  one  or  two  more,  exhibiting 
rather  his  poetical  powers  as  such.  Here  is  a  piece  entitled 
"  An  Elegy.'' 

"  Joyless  I  seek  the  solitary  shade, 

Where  dusky  Contemplation  veils  the  scene  ; 
The  dark  retreat,  of  leafless  branches  made, 

Where  sickening  sorrow  wets  the  yellow'd  green. 
The  darksome  ruins  of  some  sacred  cell, 

Where  erst  the  sons  of  Superstition  trod, 
Tott'ring  upon  the  mossy  meadow,  tell, 

We  better  know,  but  less  adore,  our  God. 

Now,  as  I  mournful  tread  the  gloomy  cave. 

Thro'  the  wide  window,  once  with  mysteries  dight, 

The  distant  forest,  and  the  darken'd  wave 
Of  the  swoln  Avon  ravishes  my  sight. 

But  see  !  the  thick'ning  veil  of  Evening 's  drawn, 

The  azure  changes  to  a  sable  blue, 
The  rapturing  prospects  fly  the  less'ning  lawn, 

And  Nature  seems  to  mourn  the  dying  view. 

Self-sprighted  Fear  creeps  silent  thro'  the  gloom. 
Starts  at  the  rustling  leaf  and  rolls  his  eyes ; 

Aghast  with  horror,  when  he  views  the  tomb. 
With  every  torment  of  a  hell  he  flies. 

The  bubbling  brooks  in  plaintive  murmurs  roll ; 

The  bird  of  omen,  with  incessant  scream, 
To  melancholy  thoughts  awakes  the  soul. 

And  lulls  the  mind  to  Contemplation's  dream. 

A  dreary  stillness  broods  o'er  all  the  vale ; 

The  clouded  moon  emits  a  feeble  glare ; 
Joyless  I  seek  the  darkling  hill  and  dale  : 

Where'er  I  wander,  sorrow  still  is  there." 

This  is  by  no  means  perfect,  but  it  is  in  a  vein  of  true 
poetry ;  and  both  the  melancholy  of  the  mood,  and  the 
tendency  to  personification,  as  in  "  Self-sprighted  Fear,"  are 
very  characteristic  of  Chatterton.  The  following,  also  a 
fine  instance  of  personification,  is  from  another  Elegy  which 
contains  many  good  stanzas : — 

"  Pale,  rugged  Winter,  bending  o'er  his  tread ; — 
His  grizzled  hair  bedropt  with  icy  dew ; 
His  eyes  a  dusky  light  congeal'd  and  dead ; 
His  robe  a  tinge  of  bright  ethereal  blue  ! 

His  train  a  motleyed,  sanguine  sable  cloud. 
He  limps  along  the  russet  dreary  moor. 
While  rising  whiiiwinds,  blasting  keen  and  loud. 
Roll  the  white  surges  to  the  sounding  shore." 

There  is  a  satirical  description  of  Whitfield  preaching, 
which,  if  we  were  to  quote  from  it,  might  remind  readers  of 
some  of  Burns's  humorous  pieces  on  the  New -light  preachers 


A   STORY   OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  337 

of  Ayrshire.  What  we  have  already  quoted  from  the 
Burletta,  however,  must  suffice  in  this  vein. 

It  must  not  be  supposed,  however,  that  there  are  many 
passages  so  good  as  the  above  in  Chatterton's  acknowledged 
poems.  There  is  not  one  of  them  that  is  not  clever;  and 
from  the  longer  ones  there  might  be  selected  instances  of 
nervous  and  epigrammatic  expression,  and  of  sudden  strokes 
of  fancy,  which  would  have  done  credit  to  any  veteran  writer  of 
the  time.  But,  upon  the  whole,  except  as  bearing  on  the  life 
and  character  of  their  extraordinary  author,  these  poems 
possess  little  interest ;  and,  were  an  editor  to  go  over  them 
now,  with  a  view  to  select  such  portions  of  them  as,  apart 
from  the  peculiar  circumstances  of  their  authorship,  might 
be  entitled  to  preservation  in  a  collected  edition  of  extracts 
from  the  English  poets,  all  that  he  could  find  in  them 
suitable  for  his  purpose  might  be  comprised  in  a  very  few 
printed  pages. 

It  is  very  different  with  the  antique  pieces  written  in  the 
names  of  Kowley  and  of  other  poets.  Whether,  in  the 
composition  of  these  poems,  it  was  Chatterton's  habit  first  to 
write  in  ordinary  phraseology,  and  then,  by  the  help  of 
glossaries,  to  translate  what  he  had  written  into  archaic 
language,  or  whether  he  had  by  practice  become  so  far 
master  of  ancient  words  and  expressions  as  to  be  able  to 
write  directly  in  the  fictitious  dialect  he  had  prescribed  for 
himself,  certain  it  is  that,  whenever  his  thoughts  and  fancies 
attained  their  highest  strain,  he  either  was  whirled  into  the 
archaic  form  by  an  irresistible  instinct,  or  deliberately 
adopted  it.  Up  to  a  certain  point,  as  it  were,  Chatterton 
could  remain  himself;  but  the  moment  he  was  hurried  past 
that  point,  the  moment  he  attained  to  a  certain  degree  of 
sublimity,  or  fervour,  or  solemnity  in  his  conceptions,  and 
was  constrained  to  continue  at  the  same  pitch,  at  that 
moment  he  reverted  to  the  fifteenth  century,  and  passed  mto 
the  soul  of  Kowley.  No  one  who  has  not  read  the  antique 
poems  of  Chatterton  can  conceive  what  extraordinary  things 
they  are.  Feeling  this,  and  feeling  that  all  tliat  wc  liave 
written  about  Chatterton  hitherto  would  be  out  of  proportion, 

z 


338  CHATTERTON  : 

unless  we  could  communicate  some  idea  of  the  force  of  his 
genius  as  shown  in  his  Eowley  antiques,  we  shall  close  this 
sketch  of  his  life  with  a  slight  account  of  these  poems,  and 
with  a  few  extracts  from  them. 

The  antique  poems,  as  printed  in  Southey's  edition  of 
Chatterton's  works  in  1803,  occupy  one  octavo  volume  out 
of  three.  The  following  is  a  descriptive  list  of  the  most 
important  of  them  : — ■ 

1.  Fowr  Eclogues,  or  supposed  poetical  dialogues  of  shepherds  and  shepherd- 
esses at  different  periods  in  the  past  history  of  England — chiefly  about  the 
period  of  the  Wars  of  the  Roses.  The  first  three  of  the  Eclogues  were  printed 
from  MSS.  in  Chatterton's  writing  in  the  possession  of  Mr.  Catcott,  to  whom 
they  had  been  given  as  transcripts  of  old  poems  by  Rowley ;  the  fourth  was 
published  in  the  Town  and  Country  Magazine  for  May,  1769,  with  this  title, 
"  Elinonre  and  Juga ;  written  three  hundi-ed  years  ago  by  T.  Rowley,  secular 
priest." 

2.  The  Parliament  of  Sjtrytes :  "  A  most  nierrie  Entyrlude,  plaied  by  the  Car- 
melyte  Freeres  at  Mastre  Canynges  hys  greete  howse,  before  Mastre  Canynges 
and  Byshoppe  Carpenterre,  on  dedicatynge  the  Chyrche  of  Oure  Ladie  of  Red- 
clefte ;  wroten  bie  T.  Rowleie  and  J.  Iscamme."  Printed  from  Mr.  Barrett's 
History  of  Bristol :  the  original,  in  Chatterton's  handwriting,  in  the  British 
Museum. 

3.  The  Tournament :  A  dramatic  account  by  Rowley  of  a  Tournament,  held 
at  Bristol  before  Edward  I.  in  1285,  in  which  Sir  Simon  Burton,  one  of  the  old 
worthies  of  Bristol,  and  the  original  founder  of  the  Church  of  St.  Mary  Eedcliffe, 
which  Canynge  rebuilt,  showed  his  prowess  over  all  other  knights.  Printed 
from  a  copy  made  by  Catcott  from  one  in  Chatterton's  handwriting. 

4.  Tlie  Bristoioe  Tragedie  ;  or  the  Dethe  of  Syr  Charles  Bawdin  :  A  ballad,  in 
nearly  a  hundred  stanzas,  celebrating  the  death  of  Sir  Charles  Baldwin,  other- 
wise Sir  Baldwin  Fulford,  a  zealous  Lancastrian,  who  was  executed  at  Bristol, 
in  1461,  by  order  of  Edward  IV.  The  poem  was  printed  in  London,  in  1772, 
from  a  copy  made  by  Catcott  from  one  in  Chatterton's  handwriting.  Chat- 
terton,  it  appears,  acknowledged  to  his  mother  and  sister  that  he  was  the 
author  of  this  poem. 

5»  The  Storie  of  William  Canynge :  A  poem  in  twenty-five  stanzas,  purporting 
to  be  extracted  from  a  prose  work  by  Rowley,  giving  an  account  of  eminent 
natives  of  Bristol,  from  the  earliest  times  to  his  own.  The  first  thirty-four 
lines  of  this  poem  are  extant  on  the  *'  original  vellum  "  given  by  Chatterton  to 
Mr.  Barrett ;  the  rest  is  from  various  transcripts. 

6.  Songe  to  jElla,  Lorde  of  the  Casfel  of  Brystowe  ynne  dates  of  yore:  A  short 
Pindaric  lyric  by  Rowley,  to  the  memory  of  J^^Ua,  the  great  Saxon  chieftain 
of  West  England,  and  enemy  of  the  Danes  in  the  tenth  century.  Printed 
from  the  Catcott  MSS. 

7.  jElla:  "A  Tragycal  Enterlude,  or  Discoorseynge  Tragedie,  wrotenn  by 
Thomas  Rowleie ;  plajedd  before  Mastre  Canynge,  atte  hys  howse  nempte  the 
Rodde  Lodge ;  alsoe  before  the  Duke  of  Norfolck,  Johan  Howard,"  This  is 
Chatterton's  masterpiece.  It  is  a  long  dramatic  poem  in  various  rhyme, 
with  songs  interspersed,  originally  printed  from  a  manuscript  in  Chatterton's 
hand,  in  the  possession  of  Mr.  Catcott.  The  hero  of  the  drama  is  the  aforesaid 
.^lla,  the  Saxon  lord  of  Bristol  in  the  tenth  century,  and  the  hammer  of  the 
then  invading  Danes.  The  plot  is  this  : — ^lla  has  just  married  the  beauteous 
Birtha,  and  is  feasting  at  Bristol  in  all  the  joy  of  his  spousals,  when  the  news 
is  brought  that  two  hosts  of  the  Danes,  under  Magnus  and  Hurra,  are  ravaging 
the  countiy  round.  ^]lla  tears  himself  away  from  Birtha ;  meets  the  Danes ; 
totally  defeats  Magnus  and  his  host;  and  drives  Hurra  and  his  host  skulking 


A  STORY  OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  339 

into  the  woods.  He  is  in  the  pride  of  his  victory  when  his  friend  Celmonde, 
who  has  been  secretly  in  love  with  Birtha,  steals  from  the  camp,  and  going  to 
Bristol  alone,  tells  Birtha  that  her  husband  is  sorely  wounded,  and  wishes  her 
to  come  to  him.  Birtha  mounts  a  horse  immediately ;  and  not  waiting  to 
inform  her  maidens  of  her  purpose,  rides  off  with  Celmonde.  They  go  through 
a  wood ;  where,  as  Celmonde  is  revealing  his  purpose  and  offering  violence, 
Hurra  and  his  Danes  come  to  the  rescue,  slay  him,  and  magnanimously 
protect  Birtha.  They  escort  her  to  Bristol ;  where,  meanwhile,  however, 
-^Ila  has  arrived,  and  thinking  his  Birtha  false,  has  stabbed  himself.  He 
survives  to  see  her,  and  then  dies ;  and  she  swoons  on  his  body. 

8.  Goddwynn :  "  A  Tragedie,  by  Thomas  Rowleie."  This  poem,  also  from 
the  Catcott  MSS.,  is  a  fragment  of  a  supposed  tragedy,  the  scene  of  which  is 
laid  in  England  immediately  before  the  Norman  Conquest,  and  the  chief 
persons  in  which  are  Earl  Godwin,  Harold,  and  King  Edward  the  Confessor. 
The  topic  of  the  drama,  so  far  as  it  proceeds,  is  the  patriotic  rage  of  the 
Saxons  at  the  growing  power  of  the  Normans  in  the  land. 

9.  The  Balade  of  Charilie  :  "As  wroten  bie  the  gode  prieste  Thomas  Rowleie, 
1464."  This  poem,  originally  printed  from  a  professed  copy  in  Chatterton's 
handwriting  in  the  possession  of  Mr,  Barrett,  is  a  kind  of  narrative  phantasy, 
describing  a  pilgrim  overtaken  by  a  storm.  A  rich  abbot  passes  him,  and 
refuses  him  an  alms ;  but  a  poor  "  Limitour "  friar,  who  has  little  to  spare, 
acts  a  more  brotherly  part. 

10.  The  Battle  of  Hasthujs :  A  long  rhymed  description,  in  two  parts,  of  the 
supposed  incidents  of  the  great  battle  by  which  Duke  William  became  master 
of  England.  The  poem  purported  to  be  a  translation  by  Rowley  of  a  metrical 
narrative  by  Turgot,  a  Saxon  monk,  contemporary  with  the  Conquest. 
Chatterton,  when  hard  pressed,  however,  had  admitted  to  Mr.  Barrett  that 
the  first  part  was  his  own. 

These  antique  poems  of  Chatterton  (and  there  are  about 

twenty  shorter  ones   in   the  same   scries)   are,   perhaps,    as 

worthy  of  being  read  consecutively  as  some  corresponding 

portions  of  the  poetry  of  Byron,  Shelley,  or  Keats.    There  are 

passages  in  them,  at  least,  quite  equal  to  any  to  be  found 

in  these  poets ;  and   it   is   only   the  uncouth  and  spurious 

appearance  of  antiquity  which  they  wear  when  the   absurd 

spelling  in  which  they  were  first  printed  is  retained,  that 

prevents  them  from  being  known  and  quoted.     Let  lis  strip 

a  few  passages,  as  far  as  is   possible  without  changing  the 

words,  of  this  unnecessary  concealment.     Here  is  a  passage, 

with   the  spelling   partly  modernized,   from   the   Balade   of 

Charitie : — 

"  In  Virgine  the  swe'try  sun  'gan  sheen. 
And  hot  upon  the  mees  did  cast  his  ray  ; 
The  apple  rudded  from  its  paly  green. 
And  the  moll'  pear  did  bend  his  leafy  spray ; 
The  peed  chelandrie^  sung  the  livelong  day  ; 
'Twas  now  the  pride,  the  manhood  of  the  year, 
And  eke  the  ground  was  dight  in  its  most  deft  aumere.'* 

»  Soft  pear.  2  pied  goldfinch.  3  Becoming  mantle. 

z2 


340  CHATTERTOJT : 

The  sun  was  gleaming  in  the  mid  of  day ; 
Dead  still  the  air,  and  eke  the  welkin  blucy 
When  from  the  sea  arist  in  drear  array 
A  heap  of  clouds  of  sable  sullen  hue  ; 
The  which  full  fast  unto  the  woodland  drew, 
Hiltring  atenes'  the  sunne's  fetive  face; 
And  the  black  tempest  swoln  and  gathered  up  apace. 

Beneath  an  holm,  fast  by  a  pathway-side, 
Which  did  unto  Saint  Godwin's  convent  lead, 
A  hapless  pilgrim  moaning  did  abide, 
Poor  in  the  view,  imgentle  in  his  weed. 
Long  bretfuP  of  the  miseries  of  need. 
Where  from  the  hail-stones  could  the  aimer  fly  ? 
He  had  no  housen  there,  ne  any  convent  nigh  ! 

Look  in  his  glomm^d^  face,  his  spright  there  scan  : 
How  woe-begone,  how  withered,  forwend,*  dead  ! 
Haste  to  thy  church-glebe-house,  ashrewed  man  !^ 
Haste  to  thy  kist,^  thy  only  dortour-bed  :' 
Cale  as  the  clay  which  will  gre  on  thy  head 
Is  charity  and  love  among  high  elves  : 
Knight^s  and  barons  live  for  pleasure  and  themselves. 

The  gathered  storm  is  ripe  ;  the  big  drops  fall  ; 
The  forswat  meadows  smeethe^  and  drench  with  rain ; 
The  coming  ghastness  does  the  cattle  pall ; 
And  the  full  flocks  are  driving  o'er  the  plain  ; 
Dash'd  from  the  clouds  the  waters  float  again ; 
The  welkin  opes ;  the  yellow  levin  flies ; 
And  the  hot  fiery  smoth  in  the  wide  lowings  dies.^ 

List !  how  the  thunder's  rattling  dimming'"  sound 
Cheeves  slowly  on,  and  then  embollen  clangs,ii 
Shakes  the  high  spire,  and,  lost,  dispended,  drowned. 
Still  on  the  galliard  ear  of  terror  hangs. '^ 
The  winds  are  up ;  the  lofty  elmen  swangs  ; 
Again  the  levin  and  the  thunder  pours. 
And  the  full  clouds  are  burst  attenes  in  stonen  showers.*^ 

This  may  serve  as  a  specimen  of  the  descriptive  passages 
with  which  the  poems  abomid.  Here  are  a  few  samples  of 
maxim  and  thought  tersely  expressed  : — 

"  Plays  made  from  halie  tales  I  hold  unmeet ; 
Let  some  great  story  of  a  man  be  sung." 

"  Verse  may  be  good,  but  poetry  wants  more." 
"  Strange  doom  it  is  that  in  these  days  of  ours 
Nought  but  a  bare  recital  can  have  place  : 
Now  shapely  Poesy  hath  lost  its  powers, 
And  pinant'^  History  is  only  grace." 
"  But  then  renown  eterne  ! — It  is  but  air 
Bred  in  the  phantasie,  and  allene  living  there." 

1  Shrouding  at  once,  2  Brimful.  ^  Clouded  face.  *  Sapless. 

'  Accursed  man.  ^  Coffin.  '  Dormitory.  ^  Sun-burnt  meadows  smoke. 
^  Fiery  steam  ;  wide  flamings.  ^^  Noisy.  "  Moves  slowly  :  swollen  clangs. 
^*  Frighted  ear.     *^  Languid  History. 


A   STORY   OF  THE   YEAR   1770.  341 

Still  muiinuring  at  their  schap,'  still  to  the  king 
They  roll  their  troubles  like  a  surgy  sea. 
Han  England,  then,  a  tongue,  but  not  a  sting  ? 
Doth  all  complain,  yet  none  will  righted  be  ?" 

Virgin  and  halie  saints,  who  sit  in  glour. 

Or  give  the  mighty  will,  or  give  the  good  man  power." 

And  both  together  sought  the  unknown  shore. 
Where  we  shall  go,  where  many 's  gone  before." 

So  have  I  seen  a  mountain-oak  that  long 
Has  cast  his  shadow  to  the  mountain  side, 
Brave  all  the  winds,  though  ever  they  so  strong. 
And  view  the  briars  below  with  self-taught  pride  ; 
But  when  thrown  down  by  mighty  thunder-stroke, 
He'd  rather  be  a  briar  than  an  oak." 

The  following  is  a  personification  worthy  of  Spenser : — 

"  Hope,  holy  sister,  sweeping  through  the  sky, 
In  crown  of  gold  and  robe  of  lily  white. 
Which  far  abroad  in  gentle  air  doth  fly, 
Meeting  from  distance  the  enjoyous  sight ; 
Albeit  oft  thou  takest  thy  high  flight 
Heck^d  in  mist,^  and  with  thine  eyne  yblent."  ^ 

Perhaps,  however,  it  is  in  the  lyrical  pieces  scattered 
through  the  poems  that  Chatterton's  genius  is  seen  at  its 
best.     Here  is  Rowle/j/s  Song  to  JElla  : — 

"  Oh  thou,  or  what  I'emains  of  thee, 
-^Ua,  the  darling  of  futurity. 
Let  this  my  song  bold  as  thy  courage  l;e, 
As  everlasting  to  posterity  ! 

When  Dacia's  sons,  whose  hairs  of  blood-red  hue, 
Like  kingcups  bursting  with  the  morning  dew, 

Arranged  in  drear  array, 

Upon  the  lethal  day, 
Spread  far  and  wide  on  Watchet's  shore, 

Then  didst  thou  furious  stand, 

And  by  thy  valiant  hand, 
Besprenged  all  the  mees  with  gore. 

Drawn  by  thine  anlace*  fell, 

Down  to  the  depths  of  hell 

Thousands  of  Dacians  went ; 

Bristowans,  men  of  might, 

Ydared  the  bloody  fight, 

And  acted  deeds  full  quaint. 
Oh  thou,  where'er  (thy  bones  at  rest) 
Thy  spirit  to  haunt  delighteth  best. 
Whether  upon  the  blood-imbrued  plain, 
Or  where  thou  kenst  from  far 
The  dismal  cry  of  war, 
Or  seest  some  mountain  made  of  corse  of  slain ; 
Or  seest  the  hatched  ^  steed 
Yprancing  on  the  meed, 
And  neigh  to  be  among  the  pointed  spears  ; 

1  Fate.     2  Shrouded  in  mist.     ^  Eyes  blinded.     ^  Sword.     "  Accoutred. 


342  CHATTERTON  : 

Or  in  black  armour  stalk  around 

Embattled  Bristowe,  once  thy  ground. 
And  glow  ardtirous  ^  on  the  castle-stairs  ; 

Or  fiery  roimd  the  minster  glare ; 

Let  Bristowe  still  be  made  thy  care. 
Guard  it  from  foemen  and  consuming  fire ; 

Like  Avon's  stream  encirc  it  round ; 

Ne  let  a  flame  enharm  the  ground, 
Till  in  one  flame  all  the  whole  world  expire." 

From  this  piece  of  powerful  imagination  turn  to  the 
following  exquisitely  dainty  little  song,  supposed  to  be  sung 
for  the  entertainment  of  Birtha  by  one  of  Ella's  minstrels. 
The  song,  though  introduced  into  JElla,  purports  to  be  by 
Sir  Tibbot  Gorges,  and  not  by  Kowley : — 

"  As  Elinour  by  the  green  lessel-  was  sitting, 
As  from  the  sun's  heate  she  harried,^ 
She  said,  as  her  white  hands  white  hosen  was  knitting, 
*  What  pleasure  it  is  to  be  married  ! 

*  My  husband,  lord  Thomas,  a  forester  bold, 

As  ever  clove  pin*  or  the  basket, 
Does  no  cherisaunces  from  Elinour  hold  ; 
I  have  it  as  soon  as  I  ask  it. 

'  When  I  lived  with  my  father  in  merry  Cloud-dell, 

Tho'  'twas  at  my  lief  to  mind  spinning, 
I  still  wanted  something,  but  what  ne  could  tell, 

My  lord-fathers  barb'd  hall  han  ne  winning.^ 

*  Each  morning  I  rise  do  I  set  my  maidens. 

Some  to  spin,  some  to  cardie,  some  bleaching ; 
Gif  any  new  entered  do  ask  for  mine  aidens, 
Then  swithen^  you  find  me  a-teaching. 

'  Lord  Walter,  my  father,  he  lov^d  me  well, 

And  nothing  unto  me  was  needing  ; 
But  should  I  again  go  to  merry  Cloud-dell, 

In  soothen  'twould  be  without  reding.'' 

She  said,  and  lord  Thomas  came  over  the  lea, 

As  he  the  fat  deerkins  was  chasing ; 
She  put  by  her  knitting,  and  to  him  went  she ; 
So  we  leave  them  both  kindly  embracing." 

The  following,  in  another  strain,  is  also  one  of  the  lyrics 
sung  by  the  minstrels  in  /Ella,  It  is  the  song  of  a  bereaved 
maiden : — 

"  0,  sing  unto  my  roundelay, 
0,  drop  the  briny  tear  with  me, 
Daunce  ne  moe  at  halie-day, 
Like  a  running  river  be. 

My  love  is  dead, 

Gone  to  his  death-bed, 

All  under  the  willow-tree. 

*  All  blazing.  ^  Arbour.  ^  Hastened.  <  Marks  in  archery. 

^  Had  no  charms.  ^  Straightway.  '  Advice, 


A   STORY    OF   THE   YEAR    1770.  343 


Black  his  criue'  as  the  winter-night, 
White  his  rood^  as  the  summer  snow, 
Rud  his  face  as  the  morning  light ; 
Cold  he  lies  in  the  grave  below. 
My  love  is  dead, 
Gone  to  his  death-bed, 
All  under  the  willow-tree. 

Sweet  his  tongue  as  the  throstle's  note, 

Quick  in  dance  as  thought  can  be, 

Deft  his  tabour,  cxxdgel  stout, 

0,  he  lies  by  the  willow-tree. 
My  love  is  dead, 
Gone  to  his  death-bed, 
All  under  the  willow-tree. 

Hark  !  the  raven  flaps  his  wing 

In  the  briared  dell  below  ; 

Hark !  the  death-owl  loud  doth  sing 

To  the  nightmares  as  they  go. 
My  love  is  dead. 
Gone  to  his  death-bed, 
All  under  the  willow-tree. 

See  !  the  white  moon  shines  on  high  ; 
Whiter  is  my  true  love's  shroud, 
Whiter  than  the  morning-sky, 
Whiter  than  the  evening-cloud. 
My  love  is  dead, 
Gone  to  his  death-bed. 
All  under  the  willow  tree. 

Here,  upon  my  true  love's  grave. 

Shall  the  barren  flowers  be  laid  ; 

Ne  one  halie  saint  to  save 

All  the  celness^  of  a  maid. 
My  love  is  dead, 
Gone  to  his  death-bed. 
All  under  the  willow-tree. 


With  my  hands  I'll  dent*  the  briars, 

Round  his  halie  corse  to  gree  ; 

Ouphaut,^  fairy,  light  your  fires ; 

Here  my  body  still  shall  be. 
My  love  is  dead. 
Gone  to  his  death-bed, 
All  under  the  willow-tree. 

Come  with  acorn-cup  and  thorn  ; 

Drain  my  hearte's  blood  away ; 

Life  and  all  its  good  I  scorn, 

Dance  by  night,  or  feast  by  day. 
My  love  is  dead. 
Gone  to  his  death-bed, 
All  under  the  willow-tree. 


Hair.  2  -^Q^i.^  3  Coldness.  *  Fasten.  *  Elfin. 


344  CHATTERTON  : 

Water-witchea,  crowned  with  raits,  ^ 
Bear  me  to  your  lethal  tide  : 
I  die  !  I  come  !  my  true  love  waits. 
Thus  the  damsel  spake,  and  died. 

But  perhaps  the  grandest  thing  in  all  Chatterton  is  his 
fragmentary  Ode  to  Liberty  in  his  Tragedy  of  Godwin.  We 
know  nothing  finer  in  its  kind  in  the  whole  range  of  English 
poetry.  A  chorus  is  supposed  to  sing  the  song ;  which  is 
throughout,  it  will  be  seen,  a  burst  of  glorious  and  sustained 
personification : — 

When  Freedom,  drest  in  blood-stained  vest, 

To  every  knight  her  war-song  sung, 
Upon  her  head  wild  weeds  were  spread, 
A  gory  anlace  ^  by  her  hung. 

She  danced  on  the  heath; 

She  heard  the  voice  of  Death ; 
Pale-eyed  Affright,  his  heart  of  silver  hue. 
In  vain  assailed  her  bosom  to  acale.^ 
She  heard  unflemed*  the  shrieking  voice  of  woe. 
And  sadness  in  the  owlet  shake  the  dale. 

She  shook  the  burled  ^  spear  ; 

On  high  she  jeest^  her  shield; 

Her  foemen  all  appear, 

And  flizz  along  the  field. 
Power,  with  his  heafod  straught  "^  into  the  skies, 
His  spear  a  sun-beam,  and  his  shield  a  star. 
Alike  tway  brenning  gronfires  ^  rolls  his  eyes, 
Cliafts  with  his  iron  feet  and  sounds  to  war. 

She  sits  upon  a  rock ; 

She  bends  before  his  spear ; 

She  rises  from  the  shock. 

Wielding  her  own  in  air. 
Hard  as  the  thunder  doth  she  drive  it  on ; 
Wit  skilly  wimpled  ^  guides  it  to  his  crown  ; 
His  long  sharp  spear,  his  spreading  shield  is  gone ; 
He  falls,  and  falling  rolleth  thousands  down. 
War,  gore-faced  War,  by  envy  burl'd,^''  arist 
His  fiery  helm  nodding  to  the  air, 
Ten  bloody  arrows  in  his  straining  fist." 
*  *  *  * 

What  a  picture  in  the  last  line !  With  no  other  evidence 
before  us  than  is  afforded  by  this  and  the  other  antique  pieces 
which  we  have  quoted,  one  may  assert  unhesitatingly,  not 
only  that  Chatterton  was  a  true  English  poet  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  but  also  that,  compared  with  the  other  English  poets 
of  the  part  of  that  century  immediately  prior  to  the  new  era 

'  Rushes.  2  Sword.  »  Freeze.  *  Unterrified.  *  Armed. 

^  Tossed.  7  Head  stretched.  8  »p^.Q  burning  meteors, 

^  Closely  covered^  ^o  Armed. 


IT 


A   STORY   OF   THE    VEAK    1770.  345 


begun  by  Bums  and  Wordsworth,  he  was,  with  all  his  imma- 
turity, almost  solitary  in  the  possession  of  the  highest  poetic 
gift.  Pope,  Thomson,  and  Goldsmith,  were  poets  of  this 
century ;  and  no  sensible  man  will  for  a  moment  think  of 
comparing  the  boy  of  Bristol,  in  respect  of  his  whole  activity, 
with  these  fine  stars  of  our  literature,  or  even  with  some  of 
the  lesser  stars  that  shone  along  with  them.  But  he  had  a 
specific  fire  and  force  of  imagination  in  him  which  they  had 
not;  and  when  one  remembers  that  he  was  but  seventeen 
years  and  nine  months  old  when  he  died,  and  that  most  of 
his  antiques  were  written  fully  a  year  before  that  time,  little 
wonder  that,  with  Coleridge,  Wordsworth,  and  Keats,  one 
looks  back  again  and  again  on  his  brief  existence  with  a  kind 
of  awe,  as  on  the  track  of  a  heaven-shot  meteor  earthwards 
through  a  night  of  gloom. 


WOEDSWOETH.* 

Another  great  spirit  has  recently  gone  from  the  midst  of  us. 
It  is  now  three  months  since  the  nation  heard,  with  a  deep 
though  quiet  sadness,  that  an  aged  man  of  venerable  mien, 
who  for  fifty  years  had  borne  worthily  the  name  of  English 
poet,  had  at  length  disappeared  from  those  scenes  of  lake  and 
mountain,  where,  in  stately  care  of  his  own  worth,  he  had 
fixed  his  recluse  abode,  and  passed  forward,  one  star  the  more, 
into  the  still  unfeatured  future,  whither  all  that  lives  is  rolling, 
and  whither,  as  he  well  knew  and  believed,  the  Shakespeares 
and  Miltons,  whom  men  count  dead,  had  but  as  yesterday 
transferred  their  kindred  radiance.  When  the  news  spread, 
it  seemed  as  if  our  island  were  suddenly  a  man  the  poorer,  as 
if  some  pillar  or  other  notable  object,  long  conspicuous  on  its 
broad  surface,  had  suddenly  fallen  down.  It  is  right,  then, 
that  we  should  detain  our  thoughts  for  a  little  in  the  vicinity  of 
this  event ;  that,  the  worldly  course  of  such  a  man  having  now 
been  ended,  we  should  stand  for  a  little  around  his  grave,  and 
think  solemnly  of  what  he  was.  Neither  few  nor  unimport- 
ant, we  may  be  sure,  are  the  reflections  that  should  suggest 
themselves  over  the  grave  of  William  Wordsworth. 

Of  the  various  mysteries  that  the  human  mind  can  contem- 
plate, none  is  more  baffling,  and  at  the  same  time  more  charm- 
ing to  the  understanding,  than  the  nature  of  that  law  which 
determines  the  differences  of  power  and  mental  manifestation 
between  age  and  age.  That  all  history  is  an  evolution,  that 
each  generation  inherits  all  that  had  been  accumulated  by  its 
predecessor,  and  bequeathes  in  turn  all  that  itself  contains  to 

*  North  British  Review  :  August,  1S50.— The  Poetical  Works  0/ William 
Wordsworth,  D.C.L.,  Poet  Laureate,  &c.    London,  1849. 


WOKDSWORTH.  347 

its  successor,  is  an  idea  to  which,  in  one  form  or  another, 
science  binds  us  down.  But,  native  as  this  idea  now  is  in  all 
cultivated  minds,  with  how  many  facts,  and  with  what  a  large 
proportion  of  our  daily  speech,  does  it  not  still  stand  in  appa- 
rent contradiction  !  Looking  back  upon  the  past  career  of  our 
race,  does  not  the  eye  single  out,  as  by  instinct,  certain  epochs 
that  are  epochs  of  virtue  and  glory,  and  others  that  are  epochs 
of  frivolity  and  shame?  Do  we  not  speak  of  the  age  of 
Pericles  in  Greece,  of  the  Augustan  age  in  Rome,  of  the  out- 
burst of  chivalry  in  modern  Europe,  of  the  noble  era  of 
Elizabeth  in  England,  and  of  the  sad  decrepitude  that  fol- 
lowed it  ?  And  is  there  not  a  certain  justice  of  perception  in 
this  mode  of  speaking  ?  Does  it  not  seem  as  if  all  ages  were 
not  equally  favoured  from  on  high  ;  gifts  both  moral  and  in- 
tellectual being  vouchsafed  to  one  that  are  all  but  withheld 
from  another?  As  with  individual  men,  so  with  nations  and 
with  humanity  at  large,  may  not  the  hour  of  highest  spiritual 
elevation  and  sternest  moral  resolve  be  nearest  the  hour  of 
most  absolute  obliviousness  and  most  profound  degradation  ? 
Has  not  humanity  also  its  moods — now  brutal  and  full-acorned, 
large  in  physical  device,  and  pregnant  with  the  wit  of  uncon- 
cern ;  again,  touched  to  higher  things,  tearful  for  very  good- 
ness, turning  an  upward  eye  to  the  stars,  and  shivering  to  its 
smallest  nerve  with  the  power  and  the  sense  of  beauty?  In  rude 
and  superficial  expression  of  which  fact,  have  not  our  literary 
men  coined  the  common-place  that  a  critical  and  sceptical  age 
always  follows  an  age  of  heroism  and  creative  genius  ?  These, 
we  say,  are  queries  which,  though  they  may  not  be  answered  to 
their  depths,  it  is  still  useful  to  put  and  ponder.  One  remark 
only  will  we  venture  in  connexion  with  them .  According  to  one 
theory,  it  is  a  sufficient  explanation  of  these  moral  and  intel- 
lectual changes  in  the  spirit  of  nations,  to  suppose  that  they 
take  place  by  a  law  of  mere  contagion  or  propagation  from 
individual  to  individual.  One  man  of  powerful  and  original 
nature,  or  of  unusually  accurate  perceptions,  makes  his 
appearance  in  some  central,  or,  it  may  be,  sequestered  spot ; 
he  gains  admirers  or  makes  converts  ;  disciples  gather  round 
him,  or  try  to  form  an  opinion  of  him  from  a  distance ;  they, 


348  WORDSWORTH. 

again,  in  their  turn,  affect  others,  till,  at  last,  as  the  gloom  of 
the  largest  church  is  slowly  changed  into  brilliance  by  the 
successive  lighting  of  all  its  lamps,  so  a  whole  country  may^ 
district  by  district,  succumb  to  the  peculiarity  of  a  new  influ- 
ence !  Now,  this  is  perfectly  true ;  and  it  would  be  indeed 
difficult  to  estimate  the  amazing  efficacy  of  such  a  law  of  in- 
cessant diffusion  from  point  to  point  over  a  surface.  But  we 
are  convinced  that  this  mode  of  representing  the  fact  under 
notice  does  not  convey  the  whole  truth.  Concerning  even  the 
silent  pestilences,  we  have  been  recently  taught  that  they  do 
not  wholly  depend  on  transmission  from  individual  to  indivi- 
dual, but  are  rather  distinct  derangements  in  the  body  of  the 
earth  itself,  tremors  among  its  electricities  and  imponderables, 
alterations  of  the  sum-total  of  those  material  conditions 
wherewith  human  life  has  been  associated.  In  like  manner,  as 
it  appears  to  us,  must  those  streaming  processes  of  sympathy 
and  contagion,  whereby  a  moral  or  intellectual  change  is 
diffused  over  a  community,  be  regarded  as  but  the  superficial 
indications  of  a  deep  contemporaneous  agitation  pervading  the 
whole  frame  of  Nature.  From  the  mineral  core  of  this  vast 
world,  outwards  to  the  last  thoughts,  impulses,  and  conclu- 
sions of  us  its  human  inhabitants,  there  runs,  as  science 
teaches,  a  mystic  law  of  intercourse  and  affinity,  pledging  its 
parts  to  act  in  concert.  The  moral  and  intellectual  revolutions 
of  our  world,  its  wars,  its  new  philosophies,  its  outbursts  of 
creative  genius,  its  profligate  sinkings,  and  its  noble  recoveries, 
all  must  rest,  under  the  decree  of  supreme  wisdom,  on  a  con 
current  basis  of  physical  undulations  and  vicissitudes.  When, 
therefore,  a  man  starts  up  in  any  locality,  charged  withja  new 
spirit  or  a  newdfisire,  there,  be  sure,  the  ^romid_around  him 
I3~"simn^^  afiected.  New  intellectual  dispositions  are  like 
atmospheres ;  they  overhang  whole  countries  at  once.  It  is 
not  necessarily  by  communication  or  plagiarism  that  the 
thought  excogitated  to-day  in  London  breaks  out  to-morrow 
in  Edinburgh,  or  that  persons  in  Gottingen  and  Oxford  are 
found  speculating  at  the  same  time  in  the  same  direction.  In 
our  own  island,  for  example,  it  is  a  fact  capable  of  experi- 
mental verification,  that  whatever  is  being  thought  at  any  one 


WORDSWORTH.  349 

time  in  any  one  spot,  is,  with  a  very  small  amount  of  differ- 
ence, being  independently  thought  at  the  same  time  in  fifty 
other  places  at  all  distances  from  each  other.  And  yet  it  is 
equally  true  that  in  every  moral  or  spiritual  revolution  there 
is  always  a  leader,  a  forerunner,  a  man  of  originality,  in  whose 
individual  bosom  the  movement  seems  to  have  been  rehearsed 
and  epitomized ;  and  that,  in  the  beginning  of  every  such 
revolution,  the  power  of  contagion  from  man  to  man,  and  the 
machinery  of  the  clique,  school,  or  phalanx,  must  come  into 
play. 

We  do  not  think  that  these  remarks  are  too  remote  or 
abstract  for  the  present  occasion.  The  nineteenth  century,  it 
appears  to  us,  is  a  sufficiently  large  portion  of  historic  time, 
England  is  a  sufficiently  large  portion  of  the  historic  earth, 
and  the  poetical  literature  of  England,  or  of  any  other  nation, 
is  a  sufficiently  important  element  in  that  nation's  existence, 
to  justify  our  viewing  that  remarkable  phenomenon,  the  revival 
of  English  poetry  in  the  nineteenth  century,  in  the  light  of  the 
most  extreme  general  conceptions  that  can  be  brought  to  bear 
upon_it.  Against  the  preceding  observations,  therefore,  as 
against  what  seems  an  appropriate  background,  let  us  try  to 
bring  out  the  main  features  of  the  phenomenon  itself,  so  far, 
at  least,  as  these  can  be  exhibited  with  reference  to  the  life 
and  writings_of  its  mosjt^representative  mapJ'  And^rst^of^ 
Wordswoi'th  regarded  historically. 

From  Dryden  till  about  fifty  years  ago,  say  our  authorities 
in  literary  history,  was  an  era  of  poetical  sterility  in  England. 
When  Coleridge  gave  lectures  in  London  on  the  English 
poets,  he  divided  them  into  three  lists  or  sections — the  first, 
including  all  the  poets  from  Chaucer  to  Dryden ;  the  second, 
a  those  from  Dryden  inclusive  to  the  close  of  the  eighteenth 
century ;  and  the  third,  all  those  of  his  own  generation.  The 
view  presented  by  him  of  the  characters  of  these  three  periods, 
relatively  to  each  other,  was  essentially  that  conveyed  in  the 
strange  theory  of  alternate  ebb  and  flow,  alternate  immission 
and  withdrawal  of  power,  as  regulating  the  progress  of  the 
universe.  In  other  words,  the  first  period  was  a  period  of 
strength,  youth,  and  outburst ;  the  second  was  a  period  of 


350  WORDSWORTH. 

cleverness,  conceit,  and  poverty ;  and  the  third  was  a  period  of 
revival.  For,  the  poetic  spirit  being  one  constant  thing,  a 
certain  specific  and  invariable  quality  or  state  of  the  human 
soul,  not  capable  of  change  from  century  to  century,  but  the 
same  of  old,  now,  and  for  ever,  it  follows  that  the  history  of 
poetry  can  present  no  other  appearance  than  that  of  alternate 
presence  and  absence,  alternate  excess  and  deficiency,  alternate 
extinction  and  renovation.  That  is  to  say — accepting  the  poetry 
of  Chaucer  and  Milton  as  true  poetry,  we  cannot  go  on  to 
defend  the  poetry  of  Pope  and  Johnson  as  true  poetry  of  a 
different  kind,  and  then,  coming  down  to  our  own  age,  assert 
that  its  poetry  is  true  poetry  of  a  different  kind  still.  Except  in 
a  very  obvious  sense,  rendered  necessary  by  convenience,  it 
cannot  be  said  that  there  are  kinds  of  poetry.  The  materials 
on  which  the  poetic  sense  works  are  constantly  varying ;  in- 
finite, also,  are  the  combinations  of  human  faculty  and  will 
with  which  this  sense  may  be  structurally  associated  ;  but  the 
sense  itself,  whensoever  and  in  whomsoever  it  may  be  found, 
is  still  the  same  old  thing  that  trembled  in  the  heart  of  Homer. 
An  age  may  have  it  or  want  it ;  may  have  more  of  it  or  less 
of  it;  may  have  it  in  conjunction  with  this  or  with  that 
aggregate  of  other  characteristics;  but  cannot  abandon  one 
form  of  it  and  take  up  another. 

In  these  remarks  we  have  embodied  what  we  consider  a 
very  necessary  caution.  If  much  good  lias  been  done  by  that 
exaltation  of  meaning  which  the  words  Poet  and  Poetry  have 
received  from  the  hands  of  Coleridge  and  others,  as  well  as  by 
their  kindred  services  in  distinguishing  so  constantly  and  so 
emphatically  between  the  terms  reason  and  understanding, 
genius  and  talent,  creation  and  criticism,  we  are  not  quite  sure 
but  that,  at  the  same  time,  this  infusion  of  new  conceptions 
into  our  language  has  been  productive  of  some  mischief.  Agree- 
ing, upon  the  whole,  with  the  sentence  of  condemnation  which 
has  been  of  late  passed  upon  part  of  the  poor  eighteenth  cen- 
tury ;  believing  that  it  w^as  a  critical,  negative,  and  unpoetic 
age ;  nay,  even  believing  (however  the  belief  is  to  be  recon- 
ciled with  the  doctrine  of  continuous  historic  evolution)  that 
it  was  one  of  those  seasons  of  comparative  diminution  of  the 


WORDSWORTH.  351 

general  vital  energy  of  our  species  which  we  have  already 
spoken  of,  we  still  think  that  too  sweeping  a  use  has  been 
made  of  this  notion  and  its  accessories  by  a  certain  class  of 
writers.  Let  us  illustrate  our  meaning  by  an  example.  Keats, 
the  poet,  and  James  Mill,  the  historian  of  India,  were  con- 
temporaries. The  one,  according  to  the  language  introduced 
by  Coleridge,  was  a  man  of  genius ;  tlie  other  was  a  man  of 
talent.  In  the  soul  of  Keats,  if  ever  in  a  human  soul  at  all, 
there  was  a  portion  of  the  real  poetic  essence — the  real  faculty 
divine ;  Mr.  Mill,  on  the  other  hand,  had  probably  as  little  of 
the  poet  in  his  composition  as  any  celebrated  man  of  his  time, 
but  he  was  a  man  of  hard  metal,  of  real  intellectual  strength, 
and  of  unyielding  rectitude.  In  certain  exercises  of  the  mind 
he  could  probably  have  crushed  Keats,  who  certainly  was  no 
weakling,  as  easily  as  a  giant  could  crush  a  babe.  But,  sup- 
pose the  two  men  to  have  sat  together  on  Hampstead  Heath 
in  a  starry  night,  which  of  them  would  then  have  been  the 
stronger— which  would  have  known  the  more  ecstatic  pulses  ? 
Or,  to  make  the  case  still  more  decisive,  suppose  the  two  men 
to  have  been  Keats  and  Aristotle ;  Keat^,  a  consumptive  poetic 
boy,  and  Aristotle  the  intellect  of  half  a  world.  Does  not 
such  a  contrast  brhig  out  the  real  injustice  that  has  been  done 
to  many  truly  great  and  good  men  by  the  habit  which,  since 
the  time  of  Coleridge,  has  become  general,  of  placing  all  the 
men  that  belong  to  the  so-called  category  of  genius  in  one 
united  mass  above  all  that  only  rank  in  the  category  of  talent? 
For,  granting,  as  we  certainly  do,  the  reality  of  some  such 
distinction  as  is  implied  between  the  two  substantives,  is  it 
not  clear  that  the  general  mass  of  mind  possessed  by  a  man 
reputed  to  belong  to  the  inferior  category,  and  consequently, 
also,  his  general  power  to  influence  the  soul  of  the  world,  may 
exceed  a  thousand  times  that  possessed  by  a  man  of  the  other? 
In  other  words,  may  not  a  man  rank  so  high  in  the  one  kind, 
that,  even  allowing  the  kind  itself  to  be  inferior,  it  may  be 
said  with  truth  that  he  is  a  hundred  times  greater  a  man  than 
some  specified  lower  man  in  the  other  ?  Practically,  the  tenor 
of  these  remarks  is,  that  we  are  in  the  present  day  commit- 
ting an  injustice  by  following  the  tendency  of  our  young 


352  WORDSWORTH. 

Coleridgians  to  restrict  the  meaning  of  the  quantitative  word 
"  greatness"  within  the  limits  of  the  merely  qualitative  word 
"genius."  And,  speculatively,  their  tenor  may  be  expressed 
in  the  proposition  that  this  quality  or  mode  of  mind  called 
genius,  the  poetic  sense,  creative  power,  and  so  on,  may  exist 
in  association  with  all  possible  varieties  of  intellectual  or 
cerebral  vigour,  from  the  mediocrity  of  a  Kirke  White  or  an 
Anacreon,  up  to  the  stupendousness  of  a  Shakespeare.  It  is 
thus  that,  while  agreeing  in  the  main  with  the  opinion  that 
from  Dryden  to  the  close  of  the  next  hundred  years  was  a 
poetic  interregnum,  we  would  still  make  our  peace  with  those 
who  would  fight  the  battle  of  the  much-abused  eighteenth 
century;  and  that  we  would  steer  clear  of  the  controversy 
whether  Pope  was  a  poet.  As  deficiency  in  poetic  power  does 
not  imply  corresponding  deficiency  in  what  may  be  called 
ordinary  cerebral  vigour,  so  the  eighteenth  century,  though 
admitted  to  have  been  unpoetic,  may  have  been  a  very  respect- 
able century  notwithstanding  ;  and  even  were  we  to  exclude 
Pope  from  the  class  of  poets  (which  most  certainly  we  would 
not  do),  we  might  still  hold  him  to  have  been  a  phenomenon 
in  literature,  not,  on  that  account,  a  whit  the  less  remarkable. 
A  deeper  analysis  would  carry  us  farther  into  the  question  as 
to  the  connexion  between  poetic  power  and  general  intellect 
in  individuals  and  in  ages  ;  but  here  we  must  stop. 

Having  thus  explained  in  what  sense  we  understand  that 
general  assertion  regarding  the  low  state  of  English  poetry  in 
the  eighteenth  century,  (part  of  the  seventeenth  included,)  with 
which  the  name  of  Wordsworth  is  irrevocably  associated,  let 
us  attend  a  little  to  the  facts  of  the  case.  In  what  did  the 
sterility  of  English  poetry  in  that  age  consist,  and  what  words 
would  best  describe  it  ?  Here  Wordsworth  himself  comes  to 
our  aid.  The  following  is  from  an  Appendix  to  the  Preface  to 
the  second  edition  of  his  Lyrical  Ballads,  published  in  1800 : 
the  subject  under  discussion  is  Poetic  Diction. 

"  The  earliest  poets  of  all  nations  generally  wrote  from  passion  excited  by- 
real  events  ;  they  wrote  naturally  and  as  men  :  feeling  powerfully  as  they  did, 
their  language  was  daring  and  figurative.  In  succeeding  time,  poets,  and  men 
ambitious  of  the  fame  of  poets,  perceiving  the  influence  of  such  language,  and 
desirous  of  producing  the  same  effect  without  being  animated  with  the  same 
passion,  set  themselves  to  a  mechanical  adoption  of  these  figures  of  speech,  and 


WORDSWORTH.  353 

made  use  of  them,  sometimes  with  propriety,  but  much  more  frequently- 
applied  them  to  feelings  and  thoughts  with  which  they  had  no  natural  connexion 
whatsoever.  A  language  was  thus  insensibly  produced,  differing  materially 
from  the  real  language  of  men  in  any  situation.  The  reader  or  hearer  of  this 
distorted  language  found  himself  in  a  perturbed  and  unusual  state  of  mind  : 
when  affected  by  the  genuine  language  of  passion  he  had  been  in  a  perturbed 
and  unusual  state  of  mind  also  :  in  both  cases  he  was  willing  that  his  common 
judgment  and  understanding  should  be  laid  asleep,  and  he  had  no  instinctive  and 
infallible  perception  of  the  true  to  make  him  reject  the  false ;  the  one  served  as 
a  passport  for  the  other.  The  emotion  was  in  both  cases  delightful ;  and  no 
wonder  if  he  confounded  the  one  with  the  other,  and  believed  them  both  to 
be  produced  by  the  same  or  similar  causes.  Besides,  the  poet  spake  to  him  in 
the  character  of  a  man  to  be  looked  up  to,  a  man  of  genius  and  authority.  Thus, 
and  from  a  variety  of  other  causes,  this  distorted  language  was  received  with 
admiration ;  and  poets,  it  is  probable,  who  had  before  contented  themselves  for 
the  most  part  with  misapplying  only  expressions  which  at  first  had  been  dictated 
by  real  passion,  carried  the  abuse  still  further,  and  introduced  phrases  composed 
apparently  in  the  spirit  of  the  original  figurative  language  of  passion,  yet  alto- 
gether of  their  own  invention,  and  characteriaed  by  various  degrees  of  wanton 
deviation  from  good  sense  and  nature.  .  .  .  Perhaps  in  no  way,  by  positive 
example,  could  be  more  easily  given  a  notion  of  what  I  mean  by  the  phrase 
jioetic  diction  than  by  referring  to  a  comparison  between  the  metrical  para- 
phrases which  we  have  of  passages  in  the  Old  and  New  Testament,  and  those 
passages  as  they  exist  in  our  common  translation.  By  way  of  immediate 
example,  take  the  following  of  Dr.  Johnson  : — 

*  Turn  on  the  prudent  ant  thy  heedless  eyes, 

Observe  her  labours,  sluggard,  and  be  wise ; 

No  stern  command,  no  monitory  voice,  ^ 

Prescribes  her  duties,  or  directs  her  choice ; 

Yet,  timely  provident,  she  hastes  away 

To  snatch  the  blessings  of  a  plenteous  day ; 

When  fruitful  summer  loads  the  teeming  plain, 

She  crops  the  harvest,  and  she  stores  the  grain. 

How  long  shall  sloth  usurp  thy  useless  hours, 

Unnerve  thy  vigour,  and  enchain  thy  powers  ? 

While  artful  shades  thy  downy  couch  enclose. 

And  soft  solicitation  courts  repose. 

Amidst  the  drowsy  charms  of  dull  delight, 

Year  chases  year  with  unremitted  flight. 

Till  want  now  following,  fraudulent  and  slow,  ^ 

Shall  spring  to  seize  thee,  like  an  ambush'd  foe.' 
From  this  hubbub  of  words  pass  to  the  original.  '  Go  to  the  ant,  thou 
sluggard,  consider  her  ways  and  be  wise  :  which,  having  no  guide  overseer  or 
ruler,  provideth  her  meat  in  the  summer,  and  gathereth  her  food  m  the  har- 
vest. How  long  wilt  thou  sleep,  O  sluggard  ?  when  wilt  thou  arise  out  of  thy 
sleep  ?  Yet  a  little  sleep,  yet  a  little  slumber,  a  little  folding  of  the  hands  to 
sleep  i  So  shall  thy  poverty  come  as  one  that  travelleth,  and  thy  want  as  an 
armed  man.' " 

To  sum  up  the  views  thus  presented  by  Wordsworth  of  the 
state  of  English  poetry  after  Milton,  it  may  be  said  that  at 
that  time  the  nation,  having  lost  much  of  the  genuine  poetical 
power  it  had  formerly  possessed,  but  still  preserving  a  form 
of  composition  to  which  it  had  been  so  long  and  so  powerfully 
accustomed,  began  to  regard  the  essence  of  poetiy  as  lymg 
in  metre,  accompanied  by  a  certain  peculiar  and  artificial 

A  A 


354  WORDSWORTH. 

phraseology  called  poetic  diction ;  thus  begetting  that  exag- 
gerated antithesis  between  poetry  and  prose  with  which  our 
language  is  still  infected.  Instead  of  regarding  the  poetic 
faculty  as  consisting  in  a  mode  or  attitude  of  the  mind, 
disthiguishable,  on  the  one  hand,  from  the  scientific  mode  or 
attitude  whose  function  is  investigation  or  exposition,  and,  on 
the  other  hand,  from  the  oratorical  mode  or  attitude  whose 
function  is  to  excite  or  stimulate  in  a  particular  direction — 
they  made  poetry  to  consist  in  a  mode  of  language,  and  they 
estimated  the  value  of  a  poet  according  to  the  degree  of 
mastery  he  had  attained  in  the  use  of  this  mode  of  language, 
and  the  degree  of  general  mental  power  and  resource  he  could 
manifest  through  it.  Hence,  in  the  first  place,  a  gradual 
increase  of  departure  in  metrical  composition  from  the  idioms 
and  combinations  of  words  deemed  appropriate  to  prose ;  and, 
in  the  second  place,  a  gradual  reduction  of  the  range  of  metre 
itself  to  certain  fixed  varieties  and  methods  of  versification, 
which  the  older  poets,  who  did  not  so  much  assort  their 
thoughts  to  rhymes  as  let  the  thoughts  flow  out  in  their  own 
rhythm,  would  have  disdained  as  much  as  a  natural  cascade 
would  disdain  the  assistance  of  pipes.  But  while  an  exag- 
gerated antithesis  was  thus  established  between  prose  and 
poetry,  it  by  no  means  followed  that  a  very  wide  separation 
was  drawn  between  the  devotees  of  the  one  and  those  of  the 
other.  Poetry  was  indeed  a  difierent  form  of  diction  from 
prose;  but  then,  as  it  was  not  difficult  for  a  clever  man  to 
acquire  two  forms  of  diction,  one  might  very  well  be  both 
a  poet  and  a  prose-writer !  To  pass  from  prose  to  poetry  was 
but  to  pass,  as  it  were,  from  one's  town  to  one's  country 
house.  Hence  it  was  that  so  many  of  the  literary  men  of 
last  century  had  a  reputation  both  in  prose  and  in  verse. 
General  mental  vigour  candied  an  author  triumphantly  through 
either  form  of  composition.  Wit,  sarcasm,  strength,  manli- 
ness, whatever  qualities  of  intellect  or  disposition  could  earn 
respect  for  a  writer  in  prose,  were  all  capable — with  a  little 
training,  or  a  slight  native  impulse  towards  the  picturesque, 
to  aid  him — of  being  transfused  into  metre.  The  best  poetry 
of  the  age  was,  accordingly,  rather  wit  or  reflection  expressed 


WOKDSWORTH.  355 

in  metre,  than  real  poetry  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word. 
And  here  lies  the  defence  of  the  poets  of  that  time,  as  well  as 
their  condemnation.  Of  many  of  them  it  may  be  denied  that 
they  were  poets ;  but  of  almost  all  of  them  it  may  be  asserted 
that  they  were  men  of  general  mental  vigour.  In  our  disqui- 
sitions concerning  them,  therefore,  let  not  this  be  forgotten. 
If  Johnson  was  no  poet,  he  was  a  very  ponderous  and  noble 
old  fellow  nevertheless ;  and  even  the  purists  that  would  clip 
the  laurels  of  Dryden  and  Pope,  must  admit  that  we  have  no 
such  manly  literati  as  the  former  now-a-days  about  Leicester 
Square,  and  that  the  other  was  a  diamond  of  the  first  water. 

But  the  change  came  at  length.  By  the  mysterious  opera- 
tion of  those  laws  which  determine  the  risings  and  the  sink- 
ings of  the  mental  state  of  humanity  as  a  whole,  there 
seemed  to  be  effected,  towards  the  close  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  a  sudden  increase  of  the  vital  energy  of  the  species. 
Humanity  assumed  a  higher  mood ;  a  deep  agitation,  as  if 
from  a  fresh  electric  discharge  out  of  celestial  space  into  the 
solid  body  of  our  planet,  shook  the  soul  of  the  world,  and 
left  it  troubled  and  excited.  The  two  most  conspicuous  and 
extensive  manifestations  of  this  heightened  state  of  the  world's 
consciousness  were — in  the  region  of  speculation,  the  promul- 
gation of  the  transcendental  philosophy  in  Germany,  and,  in 
the  region  of  action,  the  IVench^^EevoLjlioKu  But,  as  if  the 
same  spirit  which  burst  forth  in  these  two  great  eruptions 
also  sought  vent  through  smaller  and  apparently  unconnected 
orifices  all  over  Europe,  there  were  not  wanting  other  signi- 
ficant indications  of  the  change  that  was  transacting  itself. 
In  Germany,  seemingly  apart  from  the  transcendental  philo- 
sophy, though  in  reality  deriving  strength  from  it  through 
a  subterranean  conduit,  a  new  literature  came  forth  under  the 
care,  first  of  Lessing,  and  then  of  Goethe.  And  in  our  own 
country,  sprinkled  over  as  it  had  been  in  spots  by  the  sound 
and  fertile  philosophy  of  Reid,  there  was  a  feebler  exhibition 
of  the  same  phenomenon.  Even  in  the  age  of  reputed 
degeneracy  there  had  been  men  of  the  true  poetic  spark. 
Dryden  and  Pope  may  not  have  kept  it  pure,  but  they 
assuredly  had  it ;  Gray,  notwithstanding  the  dreadful  disin- 

A  a2 


356  WORDSWORTH. 

tegration  to  which  his  Elegy  has  been  submitted  by  modern 
critics,  did  certainly  possess  the  ear  and  sensibility  of  a  poet; 
Collins  and  Goldsmith  were  men  of  musical  hearts;  and 
Thomson,  Wordsworth  himself  being  judge,  was  a  genuine 
child  of  rural  nature.  Nor  here,  whatever  other  names  are 
left  unmentioned,  let  Mm  be  forgotten,  the  boy  of  Bristol,  the 
drunken  choir-singer's  posthumous  son,  who  was  found  dead 
in  his  garret  in  Brooke  Street,  Holborn,  on  the  25th  of  August, 
1770.  But  the  real  poetic  outburst  came  after  these  men  had 
been  removed  from  the  scene,  and  was  plainly  a  consequence 
of  that  general  commotion  of  the  whole  earth  to  which  we  have 
already  alluded.  Its  earliest  unmistakeable  signs  may  be 
said  to  have  been  given  in  the  works  of  Cowper  and 
Burns.  In  the  bard  of  Olney,  invalid  as  he  was,  the  new 
force  that  was  pent  up  in  the  heart  of  nature  found  an 
English  mind  that  it  could  compel  to  speak  for  it ;  and  when 
the  swarthy  Scottish  ploughman  filled  the  Lowlands  with  his 
songs,  it  was  clear  that  the  process  of  reformation  had  been 
completed  as  regarded  this  island,  to  its  last  spontaneous 
results,  and  that  every  acre  of  the  British  earth  had  become 
instinct  and  pregnant  with  the  novel  fire. 

Accordingly,  this  was  the  period  of  the  birth  and  training 
of  new  English  poets.  Crabbe,  Scott,  Wordsworth,  Coleridge, 
and  Southey,  wp.ye.  (>,h^^^TPT^  ^f  ^^^i^  ppn'rt^^  and  in  all  of  them 
— their  peculiar  differences  allowed  for  to  the  utmost — the 
ncAV  spirit  was  visible.  It  was  assigned  to  Wordsworth, 
however,  more  than  to  any  other  man,  to  be  conscious  of  the 
fact,  that  such  a  new  spirit  had  been  breathed  into  the  world 
at  all,  and  to  conclude  the  process  of  its  diffusion  through 
society,  by  bringing  into  play  the  powers  of  theoretical  expo- 
sition through  the  press,  and  personal  influence  over  distin- 
guished contemporaries.  Born  among  the  Cumberland  hills, 
in  the  year  1770,  that  is,  in  the  year  of  Chatterton's  death, 
Wordsworth  was  but  eleven  years  younger  than  Burns.  It  is 
pleasant  to  think  that  these  two  men,  though  they  never  met, 
were  near  neighbours.  From  within  half  a  mile  of  Burns's 
house  at  EUisland,  the  Cumberland  mountains  may  be  seen ; 
and  since  the  days  of  Drayton,  the  Scottish  Scruffel  and  the 


WORDSWORTH.  357 

English  Skiddaw  have  mutually  recognised  each  other  in 
popular  verse.  Wordsworth  himself,  on  visiting  the  land  of 
Bums,  called  this  fact  to  mind  : — 

"  Huge  CriflFers  hoary  top  ascends, 
By  Skiddaw  seen, — 
Neighbours  we  were,  and  loving  friends 
We  might  have  been." 

When  Burns  died,  at  the  age  of  thirty-seven,  Wordsworth 
was  a  young  man  of  twenty-six.  He  had  been  destined  for 
the  Church,  and,  for  that  purpose,  had  graduated  at  St.  John's, 
Cambridge ;  but,  caught  as  he  had  been  from  the  first  by  the 
new  spirit  of  song,  then  hanging  most  powerfully,  as  it  would 
seem,  over  both  shores  of  the  Solway,  he  had  already  recog- 
nised his  proper  office,  and  consecrated  his  life  to  the  Muses. 
In  1793,  the  year  of  the  publication  by  Burns  of  the  fourth 
edition  of  his  poems,  Wordsworth  had  given  to  the  world  his 
first  productions — two  poems  in  the  heroic  couplet,  entitled, 
respectively.  An  Evening  Walk,  addressed  to  a  Young  Lady, 
and  Descriptive  Sketches,  taken  during  a  pedestrian  Tour 
among  the  Alps,  These  two  compositions  are  slender 
enough  for  modern  reading ;  but  how  powerful  was  the_j.m- 
pression  jthat  they  produced  on  some  minds  by  the  peculiarity^ 
of  their  style,  may  be  inferred  from  the  following  testimony 
of  another  youthful  poet,  who,  coming  to  Cambridge  imme- 
diately after  Wordsworth  had  left  it,  naturally  took  an 
interest  in  what  his  predecessor  had  done.  "  During  the 
last  year  of  my  residence  at  Cambridge,"  says  Coleridge,  "  I 
became  acquainted  with  Mr.  Wordsworth's  first  publication, 
entitled  Descriptive  Sketches ;  and  seldom,  if  ever,  was  the 
emergence  of  an  original  poetic  genius  above  the  literary 
horizon  more  evidently  announced."  It  was  not  till  1796, 
however,  that  the  two  poets  became  personally  known  to  each 
other.  Like  Coleridge,  Wordsworth,  who  had  travelled,  and 
resided  in  France  during  the  fervours  of  the  French  Revo- 
lution, partook,  and  in  no  moderate  degree,  of  the  social 
enthusiasm  of  the  time ;  and,  the  two  aspirants  having  gone 
to  live  together  for  a  summer,  in  a  pleasant  retreat  on  the 
coast  of  Somersetshire,  their  demeanour,  as  Coleridge  informs 


358  WORDSWORTH. 

US  in  his  BiograpMa  Literaria^  attracted  so  much  local  atten- 
tion, that  Government  was  induced  to  send  a  spy  to  watch 
them.  The  poor  man,  however,  after  dogging  them  for  some 
weeks  in  their  walks,  acquitted  them  of  any  disloyal  intention, 
and  even  became  ashamed  of  his  office;  feeling  sure,  as  he 
said,  from  their  continual  talking  of  one  Spy-Nosy,  as  they 
sat  together  for  hours  on  a  sandbank,  behind  which  he  lay 
concealed,  that  they  had  detected  him,  and  were  making- 
game  of  him.  As  Wordsworth's  temporary  sympathies  with 
the  French  E-evolution  may  be  supposed  to  have  placed  him 
in  vital  connexion  with  one  of  the  two  great  phenomena  in 
which,  as  we  have  said,  the  sudden  access  of  new  energy  to 
the  human  race  as  a  whole  at  that  time  declared  itself;  so,  we 
may  also  suppose,  those  sea-side  conversations  of  his  about 
Spy- Nosy,  with  the  "  noticeable  man  with  large  grey  eyes," 
must  have  placed  him  in  sufficient  connexion  with  the  other 
phenomenon,  the  Transcendental  Philosophy.  Moreover,  in 
1798,  the  two  friends  made  a  tour  together  in  Germany ;  and 
whatever  speculative  insight  was  obtained  by  Coleridge 
during  his  whole  life,  was  evidently  communicated,  if  not  in 
the  form  of  creed,  at  least  in  the  form  of  conception,  to  the 
less  analytic  poet. 

In  1798,  Wordsworth  published  his  Lyrical  Ballads ;  to 
the  second  edition  of  which,  printed  in  1800,  he  appended  his 
first  prose  exposition  of  those  principles  on  which  as  a  poet 
he  professed  to  write,  and  to  which  Coleridge,  by  the  fact  of 
his  association  with  him  in  the  publication  (the  Ancient 
Mariner  appeared  in  companionship  with  the  Lyrical  Bal- 
lads), virtually  gave  in  his  adhesion.  Wordsworth's  next 
publication  was  in  1807,  when  he  printed  in  two  volumes 
a  variety  of  poems  composed  in  preceding  years.  Meanwhile 
he  had  married,  and  retired  to  liis  native  Lakes,  to  lead 
among  their  quiet  beauties  the  tranquil  life  he  deemed  alone 
suitable  to  the  poetic  nature.  Southey's  subsequent  retire- 
ment to  the  same  part  of  the  country,  and  Coleridge's  frequent 
visits  to  it,  gave  occasion  to  the  celebrated  nickname  of  the 
"  Lake  School,"  applied  to  the  three  poets  and  their  followers. 
With  the  exception  of  a  few  tours  in  Scotland  and  the  Con- 


WORDSWORTH.  359 

tinent,  and  occasional  journeys  to  the  metropolis,  the  whole 
remainder  of  Wordsworth's  long  life  was  spent  among  the 
Lakes.     Here,  in  the  enjoyment  of  worldly  competence,  he 
walked,  boated,  wrote,  and  attended  church ;  hence  from  time 
to  time  he  issued  his  new  poems,  or  collections  of  poems, 
accompanied  by  prefaces  or  dissertations,  intended  to  illustrate 
their  peculiar  character ;  and  here  in  the  bosom  of  his  admir- 
ing family,  he  received  the  chance  visits  of  such  stray  wor- 
shippers  as   came   privileged  with   letters    of    introduction, 
talking  with  them  in  a  cold  stately  way,  and  not  unfrequently 
(be  the  truth  distinctly  spoken)  shocking  them  by  the  apparent 
egotism  with  which  he  referred  to  or  quoted  his  own  poetry, 
the  inordinate  indifference  he  displayed  towards  most  things 
besides,  the  painful  rigour  with  which  he  exacted  from  those 
around   him  every  outward  mark  of  respect  and  attention, 
and  the  seriousness  with  which   he  would  repeat  the  most 
insignificant  words  that  had  been  uttered  in  his  praise.    These 
particulars  regarding  the  man  are  already  irrevocably  before 
the   public   in   our  books  of  literary  gossip,   and  may  not, 
therefore,  be  wholly  omitted  even  in  a  notice  dedicated  to  the 
poet.     But  whatever  may  have  been  his  bearing  in  the  pre- 
sence of  other  men,  Wordsworth  must  have  been  at  least 
modest  and  cordial  in  his  communion  with  Nature.     And  it 
is  thusjhat  we  should  remember  him ;  not  as  the  pleasant 
ornament  of  the  social  board,  lavishing  the  kind  word  and  the 
hearty  repartee ;  not  as  the  self-forgetting  enthusiast  of  the 
hour,  burning  his  way  through  crowds,  and  drawing  adoration 
and  love  in  his  train ;  but,  asjie_was  in  his  old  age,  the  con- 
scipus  patiiarch  of  English^oesyTthe  grey4i,aired_agrTia^ 
featured  recluse,  sFunning  Ih^Haunts  of  men,  yet  with  a 
benevolent  hand  for  the  familiar  woes  of  the  neighbourhood 
which  knew  and  honoured  him ;  accustomedTTo  walk  alone  by 
day^mid  the  woods" to  pace  muttermg  by "The~ripj)le  of 
alake  injhe  moonlight ;  or,  standing  half  wa;^u£_a  mountain, 
to  turn  his  pale  unearthly  ey^jowardsjhejieayen^g^ 
S^Idbnie~wa3~t!iroug^^  into 

which,  almost  alone  of  his  coevals,  he  had  lived  to  advance ; 
and  such  he  was  till,  in  his  eighty-first  year,  death  took  him. 


360  WORDSWORTH. 

The  nature  of  the  r^v^^lntidn  piffp^t^^  f-.y  l|;^rf^vr|g-^yr>rfTi  in  the 
state  of  English  poetry  will  be  best  understood  by  attending 
to  the  general  tenor  of  certain  propositions  advanced  and 
illustrated  by  him  in  his  various  Prefaces  and  Dissertations 
between  1800  and  1820.  On  these_prQpDsitions,  as  supple- 
mentary to  his  general  critical  onslaught  on  the  poetry  of  the 
previous  age,  he  may  be  supposed  to  have  rested  his  claims  to 
be  considered  not  only  a  poet,  but  also  the  father  of  a  new 
poetical  era. 

Poetry,  according  to  Wordsworth,  "  takes  its  origin  from 
emotion  recollected  in  tranquillity;^'  what  the  poet  chiefly 
does,  or  ought  to  do,  is  to  represent,  out  of  real  life,  scenes 
and  passions  of  an  affecting  or  exciting  character.  Now,  men 
originally  placed  in  such  scenes,  or  animated  by  such  pas- 
sions, use  a  nervous  and  exquisite  language  expressly  adapted 
for  the  occasion  by  Nature  herself ;  and  the  poet,  therefore,  in 
imitating  such  scenes  or  passions,  will  recal  them  more  vividly 
in  proportion  as  he  can  succeed  in  employing  the  same  lan- 
guage. Only  one  consideration  should  operate  to  make  him 
modify  that  language;  the  consideration,  namely,  that  his 
business  as  a  poet  is  to  give  pleasure.  All  such  words  or 
expressions,  therefore,  as,  though  natural  in  the  original 
transaction  of  a  passionate  scene,  would  be  unpleasant  or 
disgusting  in  its  poetic  rehearsal,  must  be  omitted.  Pruned 
and  weeded  in  accordance  with  this  negative  rule,  any 
description  of  a  moving  occurrence,  whether  in  prose  or 
verse,  would  be  true  poetry.  But  to  secure  still  more  per- 
fectly their  great  end,  of  giving  pleasure  while  they  excite 
emotion,  poets  have  devised  the  artificial  assistance  of  metre 
or  verse.  The  rationale  of  the  use  of  metre  consists  in  this, 
that  it  provides  for  the  reader  or  hearer  a  succession  of 
minute  pleasurable  surprises  apart  from  and  independent  of 
the  emotion  produced  by  the  matter  for  which  it  is  the  vehicle. 
A  prose  version  of  a  passionate  story,  though,  if  well  managed, 
it  would  not  be  so  painful  as  the  original  transaction,  and 
might  even  be  pleasurable,  would  still  in  many  cases  be 
sufficiently  painful  to  prevent  its  being  read  more  than  once. 
But,  by  narrating  the  same  in  metre,  the  poet  is  able,  as  it 


WORDSWORTH. '  361 

were,  cunningly  to  administer  a  series  of  doses  of  pleasure 
artificially  prepared,  which,  though  not  very  perceptible,  are 
still  sufficient,  by  mingling  with  the  cun-ent  of  the  meaning, 
to  attemper  and  sweeten  its  effects.  And  rhyme  is  a  still 
higher  form  of  the  same  device.  The  necessities,  therefore,  of 
metre  and  rhyme  do  oblige  certain  departures  in  poetry  from 
the  primary  language  of  emotion;  but,  allowing  for  those, 
good  poetic  diction  should  still  approach  very  near  to  the 
language  of  real  life. 

This  yiew,_ao  useful  as  an  aggression  upon  the  florid  diction 
of  the  poets  of  the  preceding  age,  certainly  errs  by  exaggera- 
tion.  Wordsworth's  own  poetry  will  not  stand  to  be  tried  by 
it^ for,  as  Coleridge  has  shown,  there  is  hardly  a  verse,  even 
in  his  most  simple  productions,  that  does  not  deviate  from  the 
so-called  language  of  real  life.  And  it  must  inevitably  be  so. 
For,  in  the  first  place,  the  mere  application  of  the  negative 
principle  of  modification  laid  down  by  Wordsworth,  would 
amount  to  an  abandonment  of  the  point  at  issue.  Remove 
all  that  would  be  poetically  unpleasant  from  the  language  of 
real  passion  in  humble  life — the  bad  grammar,  the  incohe- 
rence, the  mispronunciations,  and  so  on  ;  and  the  language 
that  would  then  be  left  for  the  poet  would  be  a  very  rare  and 
select  language  indeed,  existing  literally  nowhere  throughout 
the  community,  but  purely  supposititious  and  ideal,  the  sap  and 
flower  of  all  popular  expression.  So  also  with  the  representa- 
tion of  passions  of  a  higher  order.  The  only  sense  in  which 
the  language  of  a  great  part  of  our  best  poetry  can  be  said 
to  resemble  real  language,  is  that  it  is  the  kind  of  language 
that  a  few  of  the  most  cultured  persons  of  the  community  would 
employ  on  very  rare  and  impressive  occasions.  But  even  the 
choicest  spontaneous  language  of  the  best  minds  when  most 
nobly  moved  in  real  life,  must  undergo  modification  before  it 
can  be  used  by  the  poet.  And  though  Wordsworth  has 
provided  for  such  modification,  by  laying  down  the  positive 
principle,  that  the  poet  is  at  all  times  to  remember  that  it  is 
his  office  to  give  pleasure,  and  by  pointing  out  the  operation  of 
this  principle  as  regards  metre  and  rhyme;  yet  he  does  not  seem 
to  have  seen  the  whole  energy  of  this  principle  as  determining 


362  WORDSWORTH. 

and  compelling  departures  from  common  usage.  His  argument 
for  the  virtual  identity  of  poetic  language  and  the  language  of 
real  life,  reminds  us  of  the  mania  for  what  is  called  a  simple 
conversational  style.  Why  do  not  men  write  as  they  speak  ? 
Why  do  they  not  convey  their  meaning  in  books  in  the  good 
racy  English  which  they  employ  at  the  dinner-table,  or  when 
giving  their  household  orders?  Such  are  the  absurd  ques- 
tions that  are  asked  every  day.  It  never  seems  to  enter  into 
the  minds  of  these  people  that  conversation  is  one  thing, 
public  speaking  another,  and  writing  a  third ;  that  each 
involves  and  requires  a  distinct  setting,  so  to  speak,  of  the 
faculties  for  its  exercise ;  that  in  passing  from  one  to  either  of 
the  others,  certain  powers  must  be  called  into  play  that  were 
before  at  rest,  or  sent  to  rest  that  were  before  in  play ;  and 
that,  accordingly,  to  demand  the  perpetual  use  of  a  conversa- 
tional style,  is  to  insist  that  there  shall  never  be  anything 
greater  in  the  world  than  what  conversation  can  generate. 
But  a  world  thus  restricted  to  the  merely  conversational 
method  of  literary  production  would  fall  into  decrepitude. 
When  a  man  talks  with  his  friend,  he  is  led  on  but  by  a  few 
trains  of  association,  and  finds  a  straggling  style  natural  for 
his  purposes  ;  when  he  speaks  in  public,  the  wheels  of  thought 
glow,  the  associative  processes  by  which  he  advances  become 
more  complex,  and  hence  the  roll,  the  cadence,  the  precipitous 
burst ;  and,  lastly,  when  he  writes,  still  other  conditions  of 
thought  come  into  action,  and  there  arises  the  elaborate 
sentence,  winding  like  a  rivulet  through  the  meadow  of  his 
subject,  or  the  page  jewelled  with  a  thousand  allusions.  Pre- 
cisely so  in  the  matter  more  immediately  under  discussion. 
Here,  too,  there  is  a  gradation.  A  man  in  a  state  of  excitement 
talks  in  vivid  language,  and  even  sets  his  words  to  a  rough 
natural  music,  his  voice  swelling  or  trembling  with  its  bur- 
then, though  still  falling  short  of  song.  But  in  the  literary 
repetition  of  a  scene,  nature  suggests  a  new  set  of  proprieties, 
answering  to  the  entire  difference  between  the  mind  in  the 
primary  and  the  mind  in  the  secondary  attitude ;  and  a  literal 
report  would  be  found  to  defeat  the  very  end  in  view,  and  to 
be  as  much  out  of  place  as  a  literal  copy  in  paintirig.     Even 


WOKDSWOETH.  363 

in  prose  narration  there  must  be  a  more  select  and  coherent 
language  than  served  in  the  primary  act  of  passion,  as  well  as 
a  more  melodious  music.  And  when,  moved  to  a  still  higher 
flight,  the  story  lifts  itself  into  metre — availing  itself,  as  it  were, 
of  a  device  sanctioned  by  an  origin  in  some  of  the  more 
splendid  moments  of  the  ancient  human  soul — then,  in  ex- 
change for  certain  advantages,  it  submits  to  restrictions  that 
come  along  with  them.  Finally,  if  the  charm  of  rhyme  be 
desired,  this  too  must  be  purchased  by  farther  and  inevitable 
concessions.  Thus^  we  repeat,  there  is  a  gradation.  In  prose 
narration  language  is  conditioned  by  a  more  complex  set  of 
necessities  than  in  actual  experience;  in  metrical  narration 
the  conditions  are  more  complex  still,  so  that,  if  the  speech 
were  of  marble  before,  there  must  now  be  speech  of  jasper ; 
and,  lastly,  in  rhyme  the  conditions  compel  the  thought 
through  so  fine  a  passage  that  the  words  it  chooses  must  be 
opals  and  rubies.  Nor  in  all  this  is  there  any  departure  from 
nature.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  a  noble  provision  that,  where 
the  ordinary  resources  even  of  musical  prose  are  apt  to  fail, 
the  mind  should  have  more  intense  methods  of  production  in 
reserve.  Such  methods  are  metre  and  rhyme.  They  do  not 
impair  the  work  of  intellectual  invention,  but  rather  assist  it, 
and  render  it  capable  of  a  more  exquisite  class  of  perform- 
ances than  would  otherwise  be  possible.  In  prose,  however 
musical,  the  meaning  flows,  as  it  were,  easily  over  a  level, 
obeying  the  guidance  of  its  own  associations ;  in  metre,  new 
associations  are  added,  which,  while  they  increase  the  dif- 
ficulty, also  stimulate  the  intellect  to  higher  and  more  trans- 
cendental reaches  ;  and  when  with  this  is  conjoined  rhyme,  or 
the  obligation  of  conducting  the  already  moving  thought  in 
the  direction  or  towards  the  horizon  of  a  certain  possible 
number  of  preconceived  sounds,  then  every  fibre  of  the  mind 
is  alert  and  electric,  the  whole  strength  of  the  household  is 
called  into  action,  and  things  are  done  that  would  surprise 
the  gods. 

Although  there  seems  to  be  no  doubt  that  the  vehement 
opposition  that  greeted  Wordsworth  on  his  appearance  as  a 
poet,  was  determined  partly  by  a  perception  on  the  part  of  the 


364  WOKDSWORTH. 

public  of  those  weaknesses  in  liis  theory  to  which  we  have 
been  alluding,  it  seems  plain  also  that  much  of  it  was  a  mere 
display  of  that  instinct  of  indignation  which  seizes  men  when 
they  see  their  household  gods  attacked. 

"  *  Pedlars/  and  '  boats,'  and  *  waggons  ! '  Oh  !  ye  shades 
Of  Pope  and  Dryden,  are  we  come  to  this  ?" 

Such  was  the  universal  feeling  of  the  critics.  The  controversy 
between  the  Edinburgh  Review  and  Wordsworth,  was  literally 
a  contest  between  the  old  and  the  new ;  in  which,  however, 
the  old  derived  certain  advantages  from  the  obstinacy  and 
want  of  tact  with  which  the  new  exposed  and  made  a  boast 
of  its  most  galling  peculiarities.  For,  if  Jeffrey's  criticisms 
on  Wordsworth's  poetry  be  now  compared  with  the  criticisms 
of  Wordsworth's  own  friend  Coleridge,  as  published  in  the 
Biograjfliia  Literaria,  it  will  be  found  that,  immeasurably  as 
the  two  critics  differ  in  spirit — the  one  refusing  to  admit 
Wordsworth  to  be  a  good  poet  at  all,  the  other  considering 
him  to  be  the  greatest  English  poet  since  Milton — there  is  still 
an  almost  perfect  coincidence  in  their  special  objections  to  his 
style.  What  Jeffrey  attacked  was  chiefly  the  alleged  child- 
ishness of  much  of  Wordsworth's  language,  the  babyism  of 
his  "  Alice  Fells,"  with  their  cloaks  of  "  duffle  grey,"  &c. ; 
and  it  is  precisely  on  these  points  that  Coleridge,  even  while 
aware  of  his  friend's  more  profound  reason  for  such  familiar- 
ities, expresses  his  dissent  from  him.  The  truth  is,  had 
Wordsworth  been  a  man  of  more  innate  energy,  more  tre- 
mendousness,  so  to  speak,  as  a  poet,  he  would  have  effected 
the  revolution  that  was  necessary  with  less  delay  and  opposi- 
tion. Wrapping  up  his  doctrinal  peculiarities,  if  he  had  had 
any,  in  the  midst  of  his  poetry,  instead  of  protruding  them 
in  a  preface,  he  would  have  blasted  the  old  spirit  out  by  the 
mere  infatuation  of  the  new,  and  wound  resistless  hands  in 
the  hair  of  the  nation's  instincts.  But  instead  of  being  the 
Mirabeau  of  our  literary  revolution,  and  hardly  aware  of 
his  own  propositions,  he  was,  as  it  were,  its  Kobespierre,  who 
first  threw  his  propositions  tied  in  a  bunch  into  the  crowd 
before  him,  and  then  fought  his  way  pertinaciously  to  where 


WORDSWORTH.  365 

they  fell.  But  even  thus  (and  there  were  doubtless  advan- 
tages in  this  method  too)  he  at  length  obtained  success.  The 
"  This  will  never  do/'  with  which  Jefirey  introduced  his 
criticism  of  the  Excursion,  proved  a  false  augury.  Slowly 
and  reluctantly  the  nation  came  round  to  Wordsworth  ;  and, 
if  there  are  still  many  that  believe  in  his  defects  and  short- 
comings, all  admit  him  to  have  been  a  true  poet,  and  a  man  of 
rare  genius.  Of  the  poets  that  have  appeared  in  England 
since  he  began~}iis  f^o^1rse — the  Byrons,  thp-  ^Shp■11ey«^  the 
Keatses^the  Tennysons — there  is  not  one  thnt  rlops  not  nwp. 
rnmrthin^;;  tn  hin  OT?nmp1o  and  influence.  Not  that  these  men 
would  not  have  been  poets,  even  had  Wordsworth  never  lived. 
Through  them,  too,  the  new  spirit  with  which  the  world  had 
been  charged  would  infallibly  in  any  case  have  asserted 
itself;  and,  as  it  is,  there  has  been  in  each  and  all  of  them, 
something  individual  and  original,  which  has  caught  portions 
of  the  new  spirit  that  even  the  soul  of  Wordsworth  could  not, 
and  been  made  capable  thereby  of  perfectly  specific  things. 
A  Nestor  may  be  the  patriarch  of  the  camp,  but  even  his 
deeds  may  be,  in  the  end,  outdone  by  the  exploits  of  the 
younger  heroes.  Of  all  the  poets  that  have  succeeded  Words- 
worth, the  one  that  stands  most  in  the  position  of  revolt 
against  him  is  Byron.  The  Byronic  in  poetry  is,  in  some  re- 
spects, the  contradictory  of  the  Wordsworthian.  And.  believing 
as  we  do  that  Byron  was  also  a  great  poet,  and  that  through  him 
there  were  poured  into  our  age  elements  of  grandeur  and  power 
that  were  wanting  in  Wordsworth,  and  yet  needed,  we  would 
willingly  go  on  to  consider  historically  the  appearance  of  this 
other  tendency  in  our  literature,  known  as  the  Byronic,  and  to 
show  how  the  two  tributaries  became  at  length  united.  It  is 
time,  however,  to  leave  the  historical  part  of  our  subject,  and 
direct  our  attention  more  expressly  to  the  qualities  of  Words- 
worth as  a  poet. 

That  Wordsworth  was  a  true  poet,  that  he  did  posses^jthe 
"  inherent  glow."  the  "  vision  and  faculty  divine,"  no  one  that 
has  ever  read  a  page  of  his  writings  can  honestly  deny. 
Coleridge,  in  whose  vocabulary  the  word  "  imagination" 
stood  for  the  poetic  faculty  ^^^^^  excellence,  pronounced  Words- 


366  WORDSWOETH. 

worth  to  be,  in  imaginative  power,  "  tlie  nearest  of  all 
modern  writers  to  Shakespeare  and  Milton."  This  estimate 
may  be  opposed  by  some  as  too  high ;  but  keeping  in  view 
the  precise  sense  attached  by  Coleridge  to  his  words,  it  will  be 
difficult  to  lower  it  very  much.  Nor,  in  accepting  regarding 
Wordsworth  a  sentence  of  the  same  or  of  similar  import,  is  it 
necessary  to  have  any  profound  theory  as  to  the  nature  of  this 
so  called  imaginative  or  poetic  faculty  which  we  then  assert 
him  to  possess.  It  is  sufficient  if  we  know  it  when  we  see  it, 
or  if  we  feel  the  force  of  any  of  those  numerous  synonyms 
and  circumlocutions  by  which  poets  and  analysts  (Words- 
worth himself  amongst  others)  have  sought  to  describe  it. 
For,  after  all,  we  define  such  terms  best  when  we  rave  about 
them,  adhering  to  no  one  form  of  expression,  but  supplementing, 
as  it  were,  the  defects  of  all  possible  conception  by  the  vague- 
ness and  the  force  of  sound.  Perhaps  the  phrase  which,  if  fully 
apprehended,  would  best  convey  the  notion  of  what  is  meant 
by  imagination  as  the  faculty  of  the  poet,  would  be  the  phrase 
"  Creative  Energy."  For  this  phrase  would  carry  with  it 
one  very  essential  discrimination — the  discrimination,  namely, 
of  the  poetic  faculty,  as  such,  both  from  that  passive  sensi- 
bility by  which  the  mind,  presenting,  as  it  were,  a  photo- 
graphic surface  to  the  universe,  receives  from  it  impressions 
of  whatever  is ;  and  also  from  that  minor  and  more  ordinary 
exercise  of  activity  by  which  the  mind,  sitting  thereafter 
amid  these  received  impressions,  recollects,  registers,  and  com- 
pares them.  What  the  imaginative  or  poetic  faculty  does  is 
something  beyond  this  ;  and  is.  more  akin  (with  reverence  be 
it  spoken)  to  the  operation  of  that  original  cosmic  power  at 
whose  fiat  the  atoms  and  the  elements  sprang  first  together. 
A  certain  accumulation  of  material,  a  certain  assemblage  of 
impressions,  or  mental  objects,  being  supplied  by  the  con- 
sciousness, and  lying  there  ready,  it  is  the  part  of  this  faculty 
to  discharge  into  them  a  portion  self  that  shall  fuse  them  into 
a  living  whole,  capable  of  being  contemplated  with  pleasure. 
This — the  poiesis  or  creation  of  new  unities,  the  information  of 
mere  knowledge  with  somewhat  of  the  spirit  of  the  knower, 
the  incorporation  of  diverse  impressions  and  recollections  by 


WORDSWORTH.  367 

the  combining  flash  of  a  specific  mental  act — is  essentially  the 
function  of  the  imagination.  Now,  as  all  men  possess  this 
faculty  in  some  degree,  and  as  in  the  generation  of  all  the  higher 
species  of  thought  or  action  it  must  be  present  in  a  very  large 
degree,  by  whatever  name  such  species  of  thought  or  action 
are  called,  it  is  only  in  a  certain  supreme  sense  that  imagina- 
tion is  set  apart  in  all  languages  as  the  proper  faculty  of 
poets.  Yet  there  is  reason  in  this.  Poets  pre-eminently  are 
men  that  breathe  their  own  spirit  into  things,  that  make  self 
dominate  over  what  is  distinct  from  self,  that  give  out  into  the 
universe  more  than  they  receive  from  it.  80  in  Goethe's 
matchless  lines  on  the  poet — 

"  Wherewith  bestirs  he  human  spirits  ? 
Wherewith  makes  he  the  elements  obey  ? 
Is't  not  the  stream  of  song  that  out  his  bosom  springs, 
And  to  his  heart  the  world  back  coiling  brings  ?" 

That  is,  the  stream  of  song,  or,  in  other  words,  of  self,  flow- 
ing forth  from  the  poet's  heart  into  the  world  of  phenomena, 
entwines  itself  there  with  this  and  with  that  portion  of  matter 
or  experience,  and  then  flows  back  to  whence  it  came,  coiling 
what  it  has  captured  along  with  it.  This  power,  this  over- 
flowing of  self  upon  the  universe,  so  characteristic  of  the 
poet,  appears  most  of  all  in  his  eye.  The  eyes  of  some  men 
are  dull  and  obtuse  ;  those  of  others  are  sharp  and  piercing, 
as  if  they  shot  their  power  out  in  lines  ;  the  eyes  of  the  poet 
are  heavy-laden  and  melancholy,  like  pools  continually  too 
full. 

However  we  choose  to  vary  the  words  that  are  taken  to 
definejhe  essential  facultyof  the  poet,  we  shall  findjhat  they 
apply_toJWordswQrth.  Every  page  of  his  poetry  abounds 
with  instances  of  imagination.     Thus,  from  the  Excursion — 

"  Some  tall  crag 
That  is  the  eagle's  birth-place,  or  some  peak 
Familiar  with  forgotten  years,  that  shows 
Inscribed  upon  its  visionary  sides 
The  history  of  many  a  winter-storm, 
Or  obscure  record  of  the' path  of  fire." 

Or  from  Peter  Bell — 

"  And  he  had  trudged  through  Yorkshire  dales, 

Among  the  rocks  and  winding  scars  ; 
Where  deep  and  low  the  hamlets  lie 
Beneath  their  little  j^afch  of  shy, 

And  little  lot  of  stars." 


368  WORDSWORTH. 

Or  from  the  fine   ode  on  Intimations  of  Immortality  from 
BecoUections  of  Childhood — 

"  Our  life  is  but  a  sleep  and  a  forgetting : 
The  soul  that  rises  with  us,  our  life's  star, 
Hath  had  elsewhere  its  setting, 

And  Cometh  from  afar  : 
Not  in  entire  forgetfulness, 
And  not  in  utter  nakedness, 
But  trailing  clouds  of  glory  do  we  come 

From  God  who  is  our  home  : 
Heaven  lies  about  us  in  our  infancy  ! 
Shades  of  the  prison-house  begin  to  close 

Upon  the  growing  boy  ; 
But  he  beholds  the  light,  and  whence  it  flows — 

He  sees  it  in  his  joy  ; 
The  youth  who  daily  further  from  the  east 
Must  travel,  still  is  Nature's  priest, 
And  by  the  vision  splendid 
Is  on  his  way  attended ; 
At  length  the  Man  perceives  it  die  away. 
And  fade  into  the  light  of  common  day." 

These,  and  hundreds  of  other  passages  that  might  be 
quoted,  show  that  Wordsworth  possessed,  in  a  very  high 
degree  indeed,  the  true  primary  quality  of  the  poet — imagi- 
nation;  a  surcharge  of  personality  or  vital  spirit,  per- 
petually overflowing  among  the  objects  of  the  othei*wise 
conditioned  universe,  and  refashioning  them  according  to  its 
pleasure. 

If  we  proceed  now  to  inquire  what  were  the  most  prominent 
of  those  other  characteristics  which,  acting  and  re-acting  with 
this  generic  tendency  in  the  economy  of  Wordsworth's  mind, 
determined  the  specific  peculiarities  of  his  poetical  produc- 
tions, we  are  sure  to  be  impressed  first  of  all  with  his  extreme 
sensibility. t^,  ^ti^  ^^^nrate  acquaintance  with^Jlift  changiup; 
phenomeuaof  external  nature.  It  is  a  just  complaint  against 
civilisation,  as  that  word  is  at  present  defined,  and  especially 
against  life  in  cities,  that  men  are  thereby  shut  out,  or 
rather  shut  in,  from  sources  of  sensation  the  most  pure  and 
healthy  of  any.  That  people  should  know  something  of 
the  aspects  of  the  earth  they  live  on ;  that  they  should  be 
familiar  with  the  features  of  at  least  a  portion  of  its  undis- 
guised surface,  with  its  rocks,  its  woods,  its  turf,  its  hills, 
as  seen  in  the  varying  lights  of  day  and  night,  and  the 
varying  livery  of  the   seasons :  this,  it  may  be   said,  was 


k 


WORDSWORTH.  369 


clearly  intended  to  be  for  ever  a  part  of  the  mere  privilege  of 
existence.  But  a  large  proportion  of  mankind  have  been 
obliged  to  let  slip  even  this  poor  item  of  their  right  in  being. 
Pent  up,  on  the  one  hand,  in  their  cares  against  starvation, 
and,  on  the  other,  in  their  devices  for  artificial  comfort,  men 
have  ceased  to  regard,  with  the  same  true  intimacy  as  of  old, 
the  venerable  face  of  their  ancient  mother.  Certain  great 
admonitions  of  the  outward,  indeed,  will  always  remain  with 
men  wheresoever  they  pass  their  days — the  overarching  sky, 
the  midnight  winds,  the  sea's  expanse,  the  yellow  cornfield, 
the  wooded  landscape.  And,  after  all,  these  are  the  images  of 
nature  that  have  most  power  to  stir  and  affect  us ;  these,  of 
which  not  even  cities  can  deprive  us.  Cities,  too,  have  their 
own  peculiar  kinds  of  scenery,  of  wliich,  and  especially  of 
their  nocturnal  aspects,  enough  has  not  yet  been  made.  Thus, 
in  Keats' s  Lamia  — 

*•  As  men  talk  in  a  dream,  so  Corinth  all, 
Throughout  her  palaces  imperial, 
And  all  her  populous  streets  and  temples  lewd, 
Mutter'd,  like  tempest  in  the  distance  brew'd, 
To  the  wide-spreaded  night  above  her  towers." 

But  of  the  rural  mmutice  of  Nature,  and  also  of  what  may 
be  called  her  aspects  of  the  horrible  and  lonesome,  most  of 
us,  above  all  if  we  are  denizens  of  cities,  are  compelled  to 
be  ignorant.  Very  few,  for  example,  can  tell  the  names  of 
the  various  forest  trees,  or  distinguish  them  from  each  other ; 
and  fewer  still  can  recognise,  either  by  name  or  association, 
the  various  wild-flowers  that  grow  in  the  meadows.  How 
much  also  of  sympathy  with  nature  have  we  not  lost,  by  not 
knowing,  with  the  shepherd  or  husbandman,  the  signs  of  the 
weather;  what  the  clouds  say  when  they  hurry  so,  what 
mean  those  motions  of  the  cattle,  and  why  the  mists  roll 
down  the  hills  ?  And  then,  in  the  more  special  region  of 
phenomena  to  which  we  have  alluded,  who  among  us 
experience,  save  by  rare  chance,  the  realities  of  those  scenes 
so  telling  in  books  of  fiction — the  dark  and  solitary  moor 
with  the  light  glimmering  in  the  distance,  the  fearful  bivouac 
in  the  depths  of  a  wood,  or  the  incessant  breaking  of  the 
waves  at  midnight    against   the  cliff-embattled    shore  ?     In 

B  6 


370  WORDSWORTH. 

that  single  ride  from  Ayr  to  Allowa'  Kirk  (we  agree  with 
a  writer  in  an  old  magazine),  the  immortal  Tarn  saw 
more,  even  omitting  the  witches,  than  most  of  us  see  in  a 
lifetime. 

Now,  it  is  a  curious  fact,  that  one  of  the  most  characteristic 
features  of  that  revolution  in  English  poetry  with  which  the 
name  of  Wordsworth  is  associated,  has  been  the  increased 
interest  that  it  has  both  instinctively  aroused  and  knowingly 
cultivated  in  the  facts  and  appearances  of  material—nature. 
If,  as  Wordsworth  himself  has  said,  hardly  a  new  original 
image  or  description  of  nature  was  introduced  into  English 
verse  in  the  age  between  Milton  and  Thomson,  our  recent 
poets  have  certainly  retrieved  the  neglect.  *'  Nature,  nature," 
has  been  their  cry ;  and  as  Bacon,  after  his  own  lordly 
fashion  of  thought,  fancied  that  it  was  of  service  to  his 
health  and  spirits  to  inhale  every  morning  the  smell  of 
freshly-ploughed  earth  into  which  he  had  poured  wine,  so 
they  have  interpreted  literally  their  prescriptions  to  the  same 
effect,  by  renewing  as  often  as  possible  their  acquaintance 
with  the  rural  earth,  and  falling  periodically  on  the  turf,  as 
it  were,  with  their  faces  downwards.  In  particular,  it  must 
have  been  remarked  what  an  increased  familiarity  our  recent 
poets  have  contracted  with  the  vegetable  department  of 
nature.  Chaucer  himself  could  hardly  have  described  the 
beauties  of  a  field  or  a  garden  more  minutely  than  some  of 
our  modern  versifiers.  Nor  among  the  poets  that  have 
helped  to  cultivate  this  delight  in  the  observation  of  natural 
appearances,  is  there  any  one  that  deserves  to  be  ranked 
before  Wordsworth.  A  native  of  scenes  celebrated  for  their 
loveliness,  he  seems  to  have  been  endowed  from  the  first 
with  a  capacity  to  feel  and  appreciate  their  benignant 
influence.  In  one  of  the  few  fragments  that  have  been 
given  to  the  world  of  his  unpublished  poem,  The  Prelude, 
he  thus  describes  his  sympathy  with  nature  in  childhood : — 

"  In  November  days, 
When  vapours  rolling  down  the  valleys,  made 
A  lonely  scene  more  lonesome  ;  among  woods 
At  noon,  and  mid  the  calm  of  summer  nights, 
When,  by  the  margin  of  the  trembling  lake. 


)RDSW0R1 

Beneath  the  gloomy  hills,  homeward  I  went 

In  solitude,  such  intercourse  was  mine  : 

Mine  was  it  in  the  fields,  both  day  and  night, 

And  by  the  waters,  all  the  summer  long. 

And  in  the  frosty  season,  when  the  sun 

Was  set,  and,  visible  for  many  a  mile, 

The  cottage  windows  through  the  twilight  blazed ; 

1  heeded  not  the  summons  :  happy  time 

It  was  indeed  for  all  of  us  ;  for  me 

It  was  a  time  of  rapture  !     Shod  with  steel 

We  hissed  along  the  polished  ice,  in  games 

Confederate,  imitative  of  the  chase 

And  woodland  pleasures — the  resounding  horn, 

The  pack  loud  chiming,  and  the  hunted  hare. 

So  through  the  darkness  and  the  cold  we  flew. 

And  not  a  voice  was  idle  :  with  the  din 

Smitten,  the  precipices  rang  aloud  ; 

The  leafless  trees,  and  every  icy  crag 

Tinkled  like  iron ;  while  far  distant  hills 

Into  the  tumult  sent  an  alien  sound 

Of  melancholy,  not  unnoticed,  while  the  stars, 

Eastward,  were  sparkling  clear,  and  in  the  west 

The  orange  sky  of  evening  died  away." 

This  intimacy  with  the  face  of  the  earth,  this  rich  and 
keen  sense  of  pleasure  in  English  nature,  whether  in  her 
vernal  or  her  wintry  aspects,  Wordsworth  carried  with  him 
into  manhood.  Submitting  it,  together  with  all  else  that  he 
knew  of  himself,  to  his  judgment  for  examination,  he  seems 
even  to  have  arrived  at  a  theory,  that  it  is  essential  for  every 
poet  that  would  peacefully  possess  his  faculty  in  these 
modern  times,  to  connect  himself  permanently  and  domes- 
tically with  some  appropriate  spot  or  tract  of  scenery,  the 
whole  influence  of  which  he  may  thoroughly  exhaust  and 
incorporate  with  his  verse.  At  least,  in  his  own  Crise,  some 
such  general  conviction  appears  to  have  blended  with  the 
mere  sentiment  of  local  attachment,  which  was  doubtless 
strong  in  him,  in  determining  his  retirement  to  the  Lakes. 
There  are  even  traces,  we  fancy,  of  a  disposition  on  his  part 
to  generalize  the  feeling  still  more,  and  to  lay  it  down  as  a 
maxim  that,  in  all  ordinary  cases,  the  natal  spot  of  every 
human  being  is  the  appropriate  spot  of  his  activity  through 
life,  removal  from  which  must  injure  him ;  and  that,  so  far  as 
our  present  social  arrangements  render  this  impossible,  and 
our  present  facilities  for  locomotion  render  the  reverse  easy, 
so  far  we  fall  short  of  the  ideal  state  of  things,  as  between 

R  B  2 


372  WORDSWORTH. 

us  and  the  globe  we  inhabit.  In  the  abeyance  of  this  law, 
(hard  law  for  Scotchmen !)  lay,  he  seems  to  have  felt,  one  of 
the  great  uses  of  descriptive  poetry.  While  men  do  tear 
themselves  away  from  their  native  localities,  and  traverse  the 
earth,  or  congregate  in  cities,  descriptive  poetry,  he  persuaded 
himself,  must  ever  possess  a  refreshing  and  medicinal  virtue. 
It  was  one  of  his  most  valued  claims,  therefore,  that  he 
should  be  considered  a  genuine  English  descriptive  poet. 
And  certainly  this  is  a  claim  that  even  those  who  think 
most  humbly  of  his  attainments  cannot  deny  him.  There 
would  be  a  propriety,  we  think,  in  remembering  Wordsworth 
as  a  descriptive  poet,  along  with  Chaucer  and  Thomson,  thus 
distinguishing  him  both  from  such  poets  as  Burns  and 
Tennyson,  on  the  one  hand,  and  from  such  poets  as  Keats 
on  the  other.  In  such  poets  as  Burns  and  Tennyson,  the 
element  of  what  may  be  called  human  reference  is  always 
so  decided,  that  though  no  poets  describe  nature  more 
beautifully  when  they  have  occasion,  it  would  still  be 
improper  to  speak  of  them  specially  as  descriptive  poets. 
To  borrow  a  distinction  from  the  sister  art,  it  may  be  said 
that,  if  Burns  and  Tennyson  are  more  properly  classed  with 
the  figure-painters,  notwithstanding  the  extreme  beauty  and 
finish  of  their  natural  backgrounds,  so,  on  the  same  principle, 
Wordsworth,  whose  skill  in  delineating  the  human  subject  is 
also  admitted,  may  yet  not  erroneously  be  classed  with  the 
landscape-painters.  On  the  other  hand,  he  diff'ers  from  poets 
like  Keats  in  this,  that  being  a  native  of  the  country,  and 
accustomed  therefore  to  the  appearances  of  rural  nature  in  all 
seasons,  he  does  not  confound  nature  with  vegetation.  In 
the  poetry  of  Keats,  as  all  must  feel,  there  is  an  excess  of 
greenth  and  vegetable  imagery ;  in  reading  his  descriptions, 
we  seem  either  to  breathe  the  air  of  a  hothouse,  heavy  with 
the  moist  odours  of  great-leafed  exotics,  or  to  lie  full 
stretched  at  noon  in  some  shady  nook  in  a  wood,  rank 
underneath  with  the  pipy  hemlock,  and  kindred  plants  of 
strange  overgrowth.  In  Wordsworth,  as  we  have  seen, 
there  is  no  such  unhealthy  lusciousness  ;  he  has  his  spots  of 
thick  herbage,  and  his  banks^of  florid  richness  too ;  but  what 


WORDSWORTH.  373 


he  delights  in  is  the  broad,  clear  expanse,  the  placid  lake, 
the  pure  pellucid  air,  the  quiet  outline  of  the  mountain. 

The  second  characteristic  of  Wordsworth's  poetry,  to 
which  we  would  call  attention,  is  the  general  intellectual 
yigojir-  it  displays,  the  large  amount  of  really  excellenT 
tliought  that  is  bedded  in  it — thought  that  would  have  been 
valuable  to  the  world  in  whatever  form  it  had  been  put 
forth,  and  which  might  easily,  had  Wordsworth  not  been  a 
poet,  have  been  put  forth  otherwise  than  in  metre.  \A'e  have 
already  asserted,  with  sufficient  distinctness,  that  poetry  is 
something  essentially  different  from  Thought  or  Proposition 
put  into  verse.  A  man  may  have  a  profound  intellect,  and 
may  carry  in  his  head  a  quantity  of  thought  sufficient  to 
set  up  a  university,  or  to  supersede  a  British  Association, 
and  yet  be  no  poet.  Or,  on  the  other  hand,  a  man  may 
have  something  of  the  poetic  spark  in  him,  and  be  an 
intellectual  weakling.  It  remains  true,  nevertheless,  that 
intellect,  or  thought — clear,  large  intellect,  such  as  would  be 
available  for  any  purpose  whatever  ;  deep,  abundant  thought, 
such  as  we  find  in  the  best  philosophical  writings  —  is 
essential  towards  forming  a  great  poet.  This  intellect  of  the 
poet  may  either  exert  itself  in  such  a  state  of  perfect  diflfusion 
through  the  rest  of  his  mind  in  its  creative  act,  as  only  to 
become  manifest  in  the  completed  grandeur  of  the  result — 
which  is  the  case,  for  example,  with  the  poetry  of  Homer 
and  Milton  ;  or  it  may  retain  its  right  to  act  also  as  a 
separate  organ  for  the  secretion  of  pure  matter  of  thought, 
which  is  the  case,  above  all,  with  the  poetry  of  Shakespeare. 
In  Wordsworth's  poetry  the  presence  of  a  superior  intellect — ■ 
an  intellect  strong,  high,  and  subtle,  if  not  of  extreme 
dimensions — may  be  discovered  by  both  of  these  tests.  In 
the  first  place,  the  substance  of  his  poetry,  its  logical  com- 
pactness, and  its  entire  freedom  from  mere  rubbish  or 
c  -mmonplace,  prove  that  a  powerful  and  scholarly  mind 
must  have  presided  over  the  work  of  composition.  On  the 
other  hand,  for  proofs  that  Wordsworth  was  familiar,  even 
formally,  with  the  best  philosophical  ideas  of  his  time,  one 
needs  only  to  dip  into  his  Excursion,  or  any  other  of  his 


374  WORDSWORTH. 

severer  poems.  Thus,  in  the  following  passage,  short  as  it 
is,  the  metaphysical  reader  will  discern  a  perfect  mastery,  on 
the  part  of  the  poet,  over  a  conception  the  power  of  grasping 
which  is  recognised  in  the  schools  as  the  one  test  of  a  mind 
capable  of  metaphysical  studies  : — 

"  My  voice  proclaims 
How  exquisitely  the  individual  Mind 
(And  the  progressive  powers  perhaps  no  less 
Of  the  whole  species)  to  the  External  world 
Is  fitted  : — and  how  exquisitely  too — 
Theme  this  but  little  heard  of  among  men — 
The  External  world  is  fitted  to  the  Mind  ; 
And  the  Creation  (by  no  lower  name 
Can  it  be  called)  which  they  with  blended  might 
Accomplish — this  is  our  high  argument." 

This,  and  similar  conceptions  of  a  very  high  metaphysics, 
were  evidently  as  familiar  to  Wordsworth  as  they  were  to 
Coleridge,  from  whom,  it  is  very  probable,  he  may  have 
originally  derived  them.  Indeed,  making  due  allowance  for 
the  necessary  difference  between  the  scientific  and  the  poetic 
mode  of  presenting  truths,  it  may  be  alleged  that  there  is 
hardly  a  notion  of  any  generality  put  forth  by  Coleridge, 
whether  in  psychology,  theology,  politics,  or  literary  criticism, 
some  recognition  of  which  may  not  be  discovered  either  in 
the  poems  or  in  the  prose  dissertations  of  Wordsworth.  The 
agreement  between  these  two  men  intellectually  seems  to  have 
been  complete  in  almost  every  particular.  Both  professed 
political  Conservatism  ;  both  conducted  their  speculative 
reasonings  to  a  point  where  they  merged  in  belief  in  Divine 
Revelation,  and  in  a  system  of  tenets  derived  from  that  belief, 
not  differing  essentially  from  theological  orthodoxy ;  and  both 
exhibited  an  ardent  attachment  to  the  forms  and  rules  of  the 
Church  of  England.  It  may  even  be  questioned  by  a 
certain  class  of  critics  whether  Wordsworth,  in  his  treatment 
of  such  matters,  has  not  sometimes  taken  leave  of  the  poetical 
mood  altogether,  and  assumed  the  mood  of  the  preacher ; 
whether  the  didactic  fit  did  not  sometimes  overcome  him  in 
his  poetry,  and  whether  he  has  not  allowed  the  controversial 
spirit,  so  manifest  in  his  prefaces,  to  run  over  also  somewhat 
deleteriously  into  his  metre. 

But,  as  distinct  from  the   general  intcllcctLial  excellence  of 


WORDSWORTH.  375 

Wordsworth's  productions,  we  have  to  notice  their  singularly- 
calm,  religious,  and  contemplative  tone^  By  thoughtfulness 
or  contemplativeiTess  we  usually  mean  something  quite 
distinguishable  from  mere  intellectual  vigour  or  opulence. 
The  French  are  an  intellectual  nation ;  they  think  rapidly 
and  powerfully,  but  they  do  not  answer  to  our  notion  of 
a  thoughtful  or  contemplative  people.  Contemplativeness, 
according  to  our  usage  of  the  word,  does  not  so  much  imply 
the  power  of  attaining  or  producing  thought,  as  the  power  of 
brooding  sentimentally  over  thought  already  attained.  If  we 
first  oppose  the  speculative  to  the  active,  and  then  make  a 
farther  distinction  between  the  speculative  and  the  contem- 
plative, the  character  of  Hamlet  in  Shakespeare  may  be 
taken  to  represent  the  union  of  the  speculative  and  the 
contemplative.  The  Prince  is  a  student  from  the  university, 
daring  into  all  questions,  and  fertile  at  every  moment  in  new 
generalities  and  pregnant  forms  of  expression ;  but  his 
peculiarity  consists  in  this,  that  far  back  in  his  mind  there 
lie  certain  peiTnanent  thoughts  and  conceptions  towards 
which  he  always  reverts  when  left  alone,  and  from  which  he 
has  ever  to  be  roused  afresh  when  anytliing  is  to  be  done. 
Now  it  is  this  tendency  to  relapse  into  a  few  favourite,  and, 
as  it  were,  constitutional  trains  of  thought,  that  makes  the 
contemplative  cliaracter.  Nor  is  it  difficult  to  see  in  what 
thought  it  is,  above  all  others,  that  the  contemplative  mind 
will  always  find  its  most  appropriate  food.  Birth,  death,  the 
future ;  the  sufferings  and  misdeeds  of  man  in  this  life,  and 
his  hopes  of  a  life  to  come  ;  the  littleness  of  us  and  our  whole 
sphere  of  knowledge,  and  the  awful  relations  in  which  we 
stand  to  the  world  of  the  supernatural — these,  if  any,  are  the 
permanent  and  inevitable  objects  of  human  contemplation 
and  solicitude.  From  age  to  age  these  thoughts  have  been 
handed  down  ;  every  age  must  entertain,  and  no  age  can 
conclude  them.  What  the  ancient  Chaldean  meditated  as 
he  lay  at  night  under  the  stars  of  the  desert,  the  same  things 
does  the  modem  student  meditate  as  he  paces  his  lonely 
room.  "  Man,  that  is  born  of  woman,  is  of  a  few  days  and 
full  of  trouble  ;  "  "  How  can  a  man  be  justified  with  God?  " 


376  WORDSWORTH. 

''  O  that  one  might  plead  for  a  man  with  God  as  a  man 
pleadeth  for  his  neighbour!" — amid  all  the  changes  of 
manners,  dynasties,  and  races,  these  thoughts  survive.  They, 
and  such  like,  are  the  peculiarly  human  thoughts,  the 
thoughts  of  humanity  as  such ;  the  thoughts  upon  which 
mankind  must  always  fall  back,  and  compared  with  which 
all  other  thoughts  are  but  intrusions  and  impertinences. 
Now,  although  it  would  be  possible,  we  think,  to  show  that 
the  effect  even  of  abstract  speculation  if  carried  far  enough  is 
to  lead  men  back  into  these  thoughts  and  keep  them  there, 
so  that  in  this  sense  the  most  speculative  men  must,  as  if  by 
compulsion,  become  profoundly  contemplative ;  yet,  generally 
speaking,  a  distinction  may  be  drawn  between  men  who 
are  speculative,  and  men  who  are  contemplative  in  their 
tendencies.  Some  men  are  always  active  intellectually; 
always  engaged  in  some  process  of  inquiry  and  ingenuity — 
inventing  a  machine,  scheming  a  project,  discovering  a  law 
of  mind  or  matter.  These  men  are,  in  the  present  sense, 
speculative  men;  they  are  continually  at  work  within  the 
ascertained  sphere  of  human  activity;  and  it  is  by  the 
labours  of  such  men  that  the  mass  of  this  world's  experience 
of  its  own  self-contained  capabilities  has  been  accumulated. 
But  there  are  other  men  who,  either  without  being  mentally 
active  in  this  way,  or  besides  being  thus  active,  have  a  con- 
stitutional tendency  at  all  times  to  fall  into  a  musing  attitude ; 
to  relapse,  as  we  have  already  expressed  it,  into  certain 
ancient  and  footworn  trains  of  thought  that  lead  apparently 
nowhither.  These  are  the  contemplative  men ;  the  men 
whose  favourite  position  is  rather  at  the  circumference  of  the 
known  sphere  than  within  it ;  the  men  who,  at  whatever 
time  they  may  be  born,  receive,  cherish,  and  transmit 
the  permanent  and  characteristic  thoughts  of  the  human 
race.  This  quality  of  contemplativeness  is  always  associated 
in  our  minds  with  the  idea  of  sadness,  tearfulness,  melan- 
choly. The  patriarch  Isaac,  of  whom  we  are  told  that  he 
went  out  into  the  fields  to  meditate  at  eventide,  seems,  in 
our  fancy,  the  most  mild  and  pensive  of  the  characters  of 
Scripture.     And  such  men  are  the  salt  of  the  earth.     There 


WOEDSWOETH.  377 

IS  little  originality,  indeed,  in  such  thoughts  as,  we  have 
said,  form  the  appropriate  food  of  the  contemplative  mind. 
To  realize  the  conception,  "  All  flesh  is  grass,"  for  example, 
or  the  conception,  "  Why  do  the  wicked  prosper  ? "  seems 
but  a  very  small  effort  indeed  of  the  intellect,  by  no  means 
comparable  to  the  effort  required  in  almost  every  act  of  daily 
life.  Nevertheless,  it  remains  true  that  it  is  only  out  of  a 
deep  soil  of  such  old  and  simple  conceptions,  that  any  kind 
of  true  human  greatness  can  rear  itself;  and  also  that  there 
are  very  few  minds  indeed,  in  these  days  of  ours,  over  which 
these  and  similar  conceptions  have  their  due  degree  of  power. 
It  is  accordingly  one  of  the  chief  merits  of  Wordsworth  that 
in  him  this  reference  to  the  supernatural,  this  disposition  to 
interpret  all  that  is  visible  in  the  spirit  of  a  conviction  of  its 
evanescence,  did  exist  in  a  very  high  and  unusual  measure. 
He  was  essentially  a  pensive  or  contemplative  man  ;  a  man 
that  was  perpetually  recurring  to  those  few  extreme  thoughts 
and  conceptions  which  most  men  never  care  to  reach,  and 
beyond  which  no  man  can  go.  This,  which  was  conspicuous 
in  the  very  aspect  of  his  countenance,  and  which  his  recluse 
life  illustrated,  he  has  himself  explicitly  asserted. 

"  On  man,  on  nature,  and  on  human  life, 
Musing  in  solitude,  I  oft  perceive 
Fair  trains  of  imagery  before  me  rise, 
Accompanied  by  feelings  of  delight 
Pure,  or  with  no  unpleasing  sadness  mixed  ; 
And  I  am  conscious  of  affecting  thoughts 
And  dear  remembrances,  whose  presence  soothes 
Or  elevates  the  mind,  content  to  weigh 
The  good  and  evil  of  our  mortal  state. 
— To  these  emotions,  whencesoe'er  they  come, 
Whether  from  breath  of  outward  circumstance, 
Or  from  the  soul — an  impulse  to  herself — 
I  would  give  utterance  in  numerous  verse." 

Tt  is  the  blending  in  Wordsworth  of  this  contemplative 
tendency  wjjj]_3>jpiio.h_gen^raLjdgmir  of  intellecVthaOias 
earned  for  him  the  name  of  the  EnglishTTiitosophical  Poet. 
It  ought  to  be  observed  also,  at  the  same  time,  that  in  all 
Wordsworth's  contemplative  poetry  the  influence  of  Christian 
doctrine  is  plainly  discernible.  His  meditations  on  Man, 
Nature,  and  the  Future,  are  not  those   of   a   Pagan    sage, 


378  WORDSWORTH. 

however  his  language  may  sometimes  consist  even  with 
a  lofty  Pagan  view  of  the  universe  ;  on  the  contrary,  he 
seems  to  think  throughout  as  one  in  whose  manner  of 
transacting  for  himself  those  great  and  paramount  conceptions 
that  form  the  necessary  matter  of  all  real  contemplation,  that 
sweet  and  consoling  modification  had  been  wrought  which 
Christianity  has  rendered  possible. 

One  of  the  results  of  Wordsworth's  naturally  pensive  dis- 
position, left  to  expatiate  as  it  chiefly  was  among  the  objects 
of  a  retired  and  pastoral  neighbourhood,  was,  that  it  gave  him 
a  specially  keen  and  sympathetic  eye  for  the  characteristic 
miseries  of  rural  life.  We  do  not  think  that  he  was  the  man 
that  could 

"  hang 
Brooding  above  the  fierce  confederate  storm 
Of  sorrow,  barricadoed  evermore 
Within  the  walls  of  cities." 

But  no  man,  better  than  he,  could 

*'  Hear  Humanity  in  fields  and  groves 
Pipe  solitary  anguish." 

In  pathetic  stories  of  humble  rural  life  we  know  no  poet 
superior  to  Wordsworth.  All  the  ordinary  and,  if  we  may 
so  speak,  parochial  woes  of  rural  existence  in  England,  seem 
to  have  been  diligently  noted  and  pondered  by  him.  It  is 
tolds  of  Burns  by  Dugald  Stewart,  that  as  they  were  walking 
together  one  morning  in  the  direction  of  the  Braid  Hills,  near 
Edinburgh,  where  they  commanded  a  prospect  of  the  adjacent 
country,  the  poet  remarked  that  the  sight  of  so  many  smoking 
cottages  gave  a  pleasure  to  his  mind  which  he  did  not  believe 
any  one  could  understand  that  did  not  know,  as  he  did,  how 
much  of  real  worth  and  happiness  such  poor  habitations  might 
contain.  Now,  if  the  glance  with  which  Wordsworth,  in  his 
poetry,  looks  abroad  on  the  cottage-sprinkled  scenery  of  his 
native  district  cannot  be  said  to  show  that  warm  familiarity 
with  the  daily  tenor  of  humble  rustic  life  which  Burns  had 
from  experience,  it  may  at  least  be  compared  to  the  kindly 
glance  of  some  pious  and  diligent  pastor,  such  as  Wordsworth 
has  himself  described  in  his  Excursion,  surveying  from  a 
height  the  scattered  homes  of  his  well-known  parishioners. 


WORDSWORTH.  379 

At  home  in  the  parsonage  there  are  books,  pictures,  and  pro- 
bably a  piano,  the  care  of  a  gentle  wife  or  daughters  ;  in  walk- 
ing over  the  fields,  too,  the  pastor,  an  academic  and  cultured 
man,  has  necessarily  thoughts  and  enjoyments  of  his  own  ; 
nevertheless,  what  lie  has  seen  and  known  of  the  habits  of 
those  among  whom  he  labours  has  given  him  an  eye  to  per- 
ceive, and  a  heart  to  appreciate,  their  lowliest  anxieties  and 
sorrows.  Almost  exactly  so  it  is  with  Wordsworth.  The 
incidents  of  rural  life  that  he  delights  to  depict  are  precisely 
those  that  would  arouse  the  interest  and  occupy  the  attention 
of  some  good  clergyman,  active  in  his  duties,  and  accustomed 
to  store  up  in  his  memory  the  instructive  annals  of  his  parish. 
The  death  of  a  poor  seduced  girl,  the  return  of  a  disabled 
soldier  to  his  native  village,  the  wreck  of  the  fortunes  of  a  once 
thriving  family,  the  solitude  of  aged  widowhood,  the  nightly 
moanings  of  a  red-cloaked  maniac  haunting  some  dreary  spot 
in  the  woods  —  nothing  can  exceed  the  pathos  with  which 
Wordsworth  can  tell  such  simple  local  stories  as  these.  One  can 
hardly  read  without  tears  some  of  his  narratives  of  this  de- 
scription ;  as,  for  example,  that  of  the  poem  entitled  Guilt 
and  Sorrow,  that  of  the  pastoral  poem  entitled  Michael,  or  that 
of  the  widow  Margaret  and  her  lonely  cottage,  as  told  in  the 
first  book  of  the  Excursion.  Showing  a  similar  eye  for  the 
moral  picturesque  in  humble  rural  life,  tliough  altogether  of  a 
more  cheerful  character,  is  the  fine  and  hearty  tale  of  the 
Waggoner,  perhaps  one  of  the  most  perfect  of  all  Wordsworth's 
compositions.  And  here  we  may  remark,  that  if  Wordsworth 
had  any  such  theory  as  we  have  supposed  as  to  the  advantage, 
in  the  poetical  occupation,  of  a  permanent  connexion  on  the 
part  of  the  poet  with  some  one  spot  or  district,  then,  in  such  a 
theory,  he  must  necessarily  have  had  respect,  as  well  to  the 
power  of  familiar  modes  of  life  to  form  the  heart  of  the  poet, 
as  to  the  influence  of  familiar  scenery  in  attuning  his  imagina- 
tion. And  certainly  there  is  much  in  this.  Karely  does  one 
that  has  removed  from  his  native  spot  form  elsewhere  relations 
that  can  stand  him  in  stead  when  he  wishes  to  glance  into 
human  life  at  once  intimately  and  broadly. 

Somewhat  dissociated  in  appearance  from  those  character- 


380  WORDSWORTH. 

istics  of  Wordsworth  which  we  have  already  mentioned,  but 
demonstrably  compatible  with  them,  was  his  strong  sense  of 
the  antique  ;  his  lively  interest  in  the  traditional,  the  legen- 
dary, and  the  historical.  We  see  in  Wordsworth,  in  this 
respect,  a  certain  similarity  to  a  man  from  whom  otherwise  he 
differed  much — Sir  Walter  Scott.  The  English  poet  seems 
to  have  had  the  same  liking  for  significant  anecdotes  and 
snatches  of  ancient  song  and  ballad,  the  same  reverence  for 
pedigree,  and  the  same  pleasure  in  associating  places  known 
to  him  with  celebrated  transactions  of  the  past,  as  were  ob- 
servable, in  still  larger  degree,  in  the  Scottish  novelist.  Among 
the  poems  that  exemplify  this  characteristic  of  our  author  are, 
the  dramatic  poem  of  The  Borderers ;  the  beautiful  poem  en- 
titled Hart-leap  Well ;  the  long  legendary  poem  of  The  White 
Doe  of  Ryhtone,  which  is  in  the  metre,  and  somewhat  in  the 
style,  of  much  of  Scott's  poetry ;  and  also  many  of  the  shorter 
pieces  written  during  tours  in  Scotland,  and  in  various  parts 
of  England.  A  particular  illustration  of  this  quality  of 
Wordsworth's  mind  is  also  presented  in  his  Scott-like  habit 
of  introducing  almost  lovingly  topographical  references  and 
the  names  of  places  into  his  verse.  Thus,  in  the  poem  To 
Joanna,  describing  the  echo  of  a  lady's  laugh  heard  among 
the  mountains  : — 

"  The  rock,  like  something  starting  from  a  sleep, 
Took  up  the  Lady's  voice,  and  laughed  again  ; 
That  ancient  woman  seated  on  Helm-crag 
Was  ready  with  her  cavern  ;  Hammar-scar 
And  the  tall  steep  of  Silverhow  sent  forth 
A  noise  of  laughter ;  Southern  Loughrigg  heard, 
And  Fairfield  answered  with  a  mountain  tone  ; 
Helvellyn  far  into  the  clear  blue  sky 
Carried  the  Lady's  voice ;  old  Skiddaw  blew 
His  speaking-trumpet ;  back  out  of  the  clouds 
Of  Glaramara  southward  came  the  voice ; 
And  Kirkstone  tossed  it  from  his  misty  head." 

But  most  conspicuously  of  all  the  poet  has  exhibited  his  in- 
terest in  the  antique  and  historical,  and  his  power  of  imagina- 
tively reproducing  it,  in  his  fine  series  of  Ecclesiastical  Sonnets, 
wherein  he  traces,  as  in  a  series  of  bold  retrospective  glimpses, 
the  history  of  Christianity  in  the  British  Islands.  There  are 
passages  in  these  sonnets  worth,  for  their  historical  effect, 
many  pages  of  the  writings  of  our  ecclesiastical  historians. 


WORDSWORTH.  381 

Of  the  various  other  excellences  of  Wordsworth  as  a  poet 
and  a  writer  we  will  particularize  but  one  more — the  exquisite 
propriety  and  delicacy  of  his  style ;  his  easy  and  perfect  mas- 
tery over  the  element  of  language.  Clearly  enough  he  must 
have  possessed  the  natural  gift  of  rich  and  exuberant  expres- 
sion ;  but  it  is  equally  evident  that  he  must  have,  at  a  very 
early  period,  submitted  this  natural  exuberance  to  a  careful 
and  classic  training,  and  also  that  he  must  have  bestowed  his 
best  pains  in  finishing,  according  to  his  own  ideas  of  correct- 
ness, all  his  compositions  individually.  Hence  greater  smooth- 
ness and  beauty,  and  more  of  strict  logical  coherence  in 
Wordsworth's  style  than  is  usual  even  among  careful  poets,  as 
well  as  a  more  close  fitting  of  the  language  to  the  measure  of 
the  thought,  and  a  comparative  freedom  from  forced  rhymes 
and  jarring  evasions  of  natural  forms  of  words.  This  appears 
even  in  the  greater  typographical  neatness  of  a  printed  page 
of  Wordsworth's  poetry,  as  compared,  for  example,  with  a 
printed  page  of  Byron's,  the  lax  and  dash-disrupted  look  of 
which  suggests  to  practised  eyes  the  notion  at  once  of  more 
energetic  genius,  and  greater  literary  haste.  Specimens  of 
Wordsworth's  extreme  felicity  of  expression  have  already 
been  given  in  the  previous  extracts ;  and  in  selecting  for  in- 
cessant repetition  such  poems  of  his  as  "  We  are  Seven,"  and 
such  lines  as  those  famous  ones  about  the  "  yellow  primrose," 
the  public  have  already  indicated  their  appreciation  in  his  case 
of  this  merit  in  particular.  A  quotation  or  two,  however, 
illustrative  of  the  same  thing,  may  here  be  added.  Observe 
how  variously  and, yet  simply  the  language,  in  the  following 
instances,  pursues  the  intricacies  and  adapts  itself  to  the  mood 
of  the  meaning  : — 

"  A  village  churchyard,  lying  as  it  does  in  the  lap  of  Nature,  may  indeed  be 
most  favourably  contrasted  with  that  of  a  town  of  crowded  population  ;  and 
sepulture  therein  combines  many  of  the  best  tendencies  which  belong  to  the 
mode  practised  by  the  ancients,  with  others  peculiar  to  itself.  The  sensations 
'of  pious  cheerfulness  which  attend  the  celebration  of  the  Sabbath-day  in  rural 
places,  are  profitably  chastised  by  the  sight  of  the  graves  of  kindred  and 
friends,  gathered  together  in  that  general  home  towards  which  the  thoughtful 
yet  happy  spectators  themselves  are  journeying.  Hence,  a  parish  church,  in 
the  stillness  of  the  country,  is  a  visible  centre  of  a  community  of  the  living 
and  the  dead  ;  a  point  to  which  are  habitually  referred  the  nearest  concerns  of 
both." — Essay  on  Epitaphs. 


382  WORDSWORTPI. 

"  To  all  that  binds  the  soul  iu  powerless  trauce, 
Lip-dewiug  song,  and  xinglet-tossiug  dance." 

Descriptive  Sketches. 
"  She  dwelt  among  the  untrodden  ways 
Beside  the  springs  of  Dove, 
A  maid  whom  there  were  none  to  praise, 
And  very  few  to  love  : 

A  violet  by  a  mossy  stone 

Half  hidden  from  the  eye  ! 
Fair  as  a  star  when  only  one 

Is  shining  in  the  sky  ! 

She  lived  unknown,  and  few  could  know 

When  Lucy  ceased  to  be  ; 
But  she  is  in  her  grave,  and,  oh, 

The  difference  to  me  !"  Miscellaneous  Poems. 

"  Then  up  I  rose, 
And  dragged  to  eai-th  both  branch  and  bough,  with  crash 
And  merciless  ravage ;  and  the  shady  nook 
Of  hazels,  and  the  green  and  mossy  bower, 
Deformed  and  sullied,  patiently  gave  up 
Their  quiet  being  :  and,  unless  I  now 
Confound  my  present  feelings  with  the  past; 
Ere  from  the  mutilated  bower  I  turned 
Exulting,  rich  beyond  the  wealth  of  kings, 
I  felt  a  sense  of  pain  when  I  beheld 
The  silent  trees,  and  saw  the  intruding  sky."  Nutting. 

"  Great  God  !     I  'd  rather  be 
A  pagan  suckled  in  a  creed  outworn  ; 
So  might  I,  standing  on  this  pleasant  lea. 
Have  glimpses  that  would  make  me  less  forlorn  ; 
Have  sight  of  Proteus  rising  from  the  sea ; 
Or  hear  old  Triton  blow  his  wreathed  horn."  Sonnets. 

"  Nuns  fret  not  at  their  convent's  narrow  room ; 
And  hermits  are  contented  with  their  cells  ; 
And  students  with  their  pensive  citadels ; 
Maids  at  the  wheel,  the  weaver  at  his  loom. 
Sit  blithe  and  happy ;  bees  that  soar  for  bloom, 
High  as  the  highest  peak  of  Fumess-fells, 
Will  murmur  by  the  hour  in  fox-glove  bells  : 
In  truth,  the  prison,  unto  which  we  doom 
Ourselves,  no  prison  is  :  and  hence  to  me, 
In  sundry  moods,  'twas  pastime  to  be  bound 
Within  the  sonnet's  scanty  plot  of  ground  ; 
Pleased  if  some  souls  (for  such  there  needs  must  be) 
Who  have  felt  the  weight  of  too  much  liberty, 
Should  find  brief  solace  there  as  I  have  found."      Sonnets. 

That  we  would  assign  to  Wordsworth  a  liigh  place  among 
the  poets  of  England,  the  whole  tenor  of  our  observations 
hitherto  will  have  made  clear.  At  the  same  time,  that  he  falls 
short  of  the  very  highest  rank ;  that  he  stands  not  on  the  top 
of  our  English  Parnassus,  where  Chaucer,  Milton,  and  Spenser 
keep  reverent  company  with  Shakespeare,  but  rather  on  that 
upper  slope  of  the  mountain  w^lience  these  greatest  are  visible, 


WORDSWORTH.  383 

and  where  various  other  poets,  some  of  whom  are  not  yet  dead, 
hold  perhaps  as  just  if  not  so  fixed  a  footing ;  this,  also,  we 
trust  we  have  been  able  to  convey  as  part  of  our  general  im- 
pression. We  do  not  think,  for  example,  that  Wordsworth 
was  by  any  means  so  great  a  poet  as  Burns — comparing  the 
two,  we  mean,  even  as  poets ;  and  if  it  is  only  in  respect  of 
general  mental  vigour  and  capacity,  and  not  in  respect  of 
poetic  genius  jper  se^  that  such  other  men  as  Dryden,  Pope, 
and  Coleridge,  could  be  justly  put  in  comparison  with 
Wordsworth,  and,  being  so  put  in  comparison,  preferred  to 
him  on  the  whole ;  yet  there  are  other  names  still  in  our  list 
of  poets,  for  whom,  even  after  the  ground  of  competition  has 
been  thus  restricted,  we  believe  it  would  be  possible  to  take 
up  the  quarrel.  With  all  the  faults  of  Byron,  both  moral  and 
literary,  "we  believe  that  in  him  the  poetic  efflux  came  from 
greater  constitutional  depths,  and  brought,  if  less  pure,  at  least 
more  fervent  matter  along  with  it  than  the  poetry  of  Words- 
worth ;  had  Keats  and  Shelley  lived  longer,  even  those  that 
sneer  at  the  Byronic  might  have  seen  poets  comparable,  in 
their  estimation,  to  the  Patriarch  of  the  Lakes ;  and  should 
our  noble  Tennyson  survive  to  us  as  a  constant  writer  till  his 
black  locks  have  gTown  grey,  we,  for  our  part,  see  qualities  in 
him  that  predict  for  him  more  than  a  Wordsworth^s  fame. 
Keeping  in  view,  therefore,  these  comparisons  and  contrasts, 
it  seems  proper  that  we  should  add  to  the  foregoing  enumera- 
tion of  what  we  consider  some  of  Wordsworth's  characteristic 
excellences,  a  word  or  two  descriptive  of  those  accompanying- 
defects  to  which  it  was  probably  owing  that  a  man,  so  near 
the  highest,  did  not  quite  reach  it. 

First  of  all,  then,  as  it  seems  to  us,  the  intellect  of  Words- 
worth, though  very  far  beyond  ordinary  in  its  dimensions,  and 
very  assiduously  developed  by  culture,  v/as  by  no  means  of 
the  largest  known  English  calibre.  Not  to  bring  into  the 
comparison  such  rare  giants  of  our  nation  as  Shakespeare, 
Bacon,  and  Milton,  there  have  been,  and  probably  still  are, 
very  many  distinguished  men  in  our  island  fit  to  rank  intel- 
lectually as  the  peers  of  Wordsworth,  or  even  as  his  superiors. 
Making  the  necessary  discrimination  between  native  intel- 


384  WORDSWORTH. 

lectual  strength  to  arrive  at  conclusions,  and  tlie  soundness  of 
the  conclusions  arrived  at,  we  should  say  that  Johnson,  Burke, 
Burns,  David  Hume,  and  not  a  few  others  that  might  be 
named,  were  presumably  men  of  more  powerful  intellect  than 
"Wordsworth.  Partly  owing  to  the  time  at  which  they  lived, 
partly  owing  to  causes  for  which  tliey  were  personally  more 
responsible,  the  intellectual  conclusions  of  those  men,  or  of 
some  of  them,  may  have  been  less  noble  and  lofty  than 
those  of  Wordsworth  ;  their  favourite  forms  of  thought  more 
coarse;  their  philosophy  less  true,  deep,  and  ethereal.  But 
their  intellectual  strength  or  grasp,  their  sense  and  insight, 
their  whole  available  power  to  do,  discern,  and  invent,  were, 
we  think,  greater.  Even  of  Pope,  on  whose  reputation  as  a 
poet  Wordsworth  and  his  followers  have  been,  in  some  re- 
spects justly,  so  severe,  it  might  be  maintained  that,  com- 
parison of  poetic  merit  apart,  his  was  the  denser  and  nimbler 
brain.  Nor,  we  believe,  would  the  greatest  admirers  of  Words- 
worth say  that  in  force  and  reach  of  intellect  he  excelled  his 
friend  Coleridge.  Fine,  stately,  and  silvery  as  Wordsworth's 
prose  writings  are,  they  want  the  depth,  originality,  and  rich- 
ness of  the  similar  compositions  of  the  old  man  eloquent. 
Wordsworth's,  in  short,  was  not  a  massive  or  prodigious,  but 
only  a  high  and  superior  intellect.  Now,  though  we  have 
already  shown  that  it  is  not  intellect  as  such  that  makes  a  man 
a  poet,  but  that  either  a  man  may  have  a  great  intellect  and 
be  no  poet,  or  may  be  a  poet  without  having  an  extraordinary 
intellect;  yet,  having  shown  also  that  to  constitute  a  great 
poet  great  intellect  is  essential,  we  may,  in  fact,  assume  it  as 
a  rule  that  the  measure  of  the  general  intellectual  power  of 
any  particular  poet  is  also  so  far  a  measure  of  his  poetic 
excellence.  According  to  this  rule  we  should  first  apply  the 
intellectual  test,  so  as  to  decide  Wordsworth's  place  (probably 
beside  such  men  as  Coleridge  and  Dryden)  in  our  general  hier- 
archy of  English  men  of  letters  of  all  sorts  taken  together ; 
then,  dividing  this  miscellaneous  body  into  kinds  or  classes, 
we  should  retain  Wordsworth  exactly  at  his  ascertained 
height  among  the  poets ;  and,  lastly,  allowing  to  the  whole 
class  of  poets  as  much  additional  elevation  as  might  be  thought 


WORDSWORTH.  B85 

necessary,  on  the  score  of  the  inherent  superiority  of  the  poetical 
constitution  as  such,  we  should  fix  Wordsworth's  just  place 
among  all  the  ornaments  of  English  literature. 

A  second  defect  in  Wordsworth,  as  a  poet,  is  his  want  of 
humour.  This  charge  has  been  made  so  often  against  other 
celebrated  writers,  that  one  is  almost  ashamed  to  bring  it  for- 
ward again  in  any  new  case  whatever.  Nevertheless,  it  is  a 
charge  of  real  weight  against  any  one  regarding  whom  it  can 
be  substantiated ;  and  it  is  hardly  necessary  to  offer  any  proofs 
that  it  is  true  regarding  Wordsworth.  There  are,  indeed, 
poems  of  his,  such  as  The  Waggoner,  The  Idiot  Boy,  and  the 
Street  Musician,  that  display  a  kind  of  genial  and  warm  interest 
in  the  little  pleasant  blunders  and  less  than  tragic  mishaps  of 
daily  life ;  but  in  such  instances  we  seem  to  recognise  the  air 
of  the  poet  as  that  of  a  sedate  old  gentleman  looking  at  matters, 
or  hearing  of  them,  with  a  hard  benevolent  smile,  rather  than 
as  that  of  a  man  of  hearty  native  humour,  recklessly  enjoying 
what  is  jocose.  There  is  no  real  mirth,  no  rich  sense  of  the 
comic,  in  all  that  Wordsworth  has  written.  In  that  full  sly 
love  of  a  jest  that  must  have  lurked  in  the  down-looking  eye 
of  Chaucer,  as  well  as  in  the  broad  and  manly  capacity  of 
laughter  that  distinguished  Bums,  the  poet  of  the  Lakes  was 
totally  wanting.  Hence  it  is,  that  among  all  his  characters, 
he  has  given  us  none  such  as  the  Host  of  the  Tabard  in  the 
Canterhury  Pilgrimage;  and  that  living,  as  he  did,  in  a  notable 
part  of  England,  the  whole  spirit  and  peculiarity  of  which  he 
sought  to  make  his  own,  he  could  not  imbibe  nor  reproduce  its 
humours.  Whenever,  in  obedience  apparently  to  an  intel- 
lectual perception  of  the  existence  in  society  of  such  so-called 
"  humours,"  he  attempts  to  introduce  them  into  his  poetry,  he 
either  only  reaches  the  playful,  or  betrays  his  natural  serious- 
ness by  keeping  the  moral  lesson  strictly  in  view.  Now, 
/  though  there  have  been  really  great  poets,  as,  for  example, 
Milton  and  Schiller,  in  whom  this  defect  of  humour  was  as 
marked  as  in  Wordsworth,  if  not  more  so,  yet  in  such  cases 
it  will  be  found  that  the  defect  did,  after  all,  operate  to  some 
extent  injuriously,  and  had  to  be  made  good  in  some  way  by 
very  ample  compensations.   If  Milton  had  not  humour,  he  had 

c  C 


386  WORDS  WOETH. 

a  large  measure  of  what  may  properly  enough  be  called  wit 
an  infinite  power  of  scorn,  and  a  tremendous  mastery  of  the 
language  of  abuse  and  sarcasm.  As  regards  Byron,  also,  not 
to  mention  Pope,  it  is  impossible  to  say  how  much  not  only  of 
his  popularity,  but  also  of  his  real  worth  as  a  poet,  may  de- 
pend on  the  quantity  of  admirable  wit  which  he  brought  into 
the  service  of  the  Muses.  But  in  Wordsworth  there  is  almost 
as  little  of  wit,  properly  so  called,  as  of  humour.  His  moods 
are  a  benevolent  seriousness,  a  rapt  and  spiritual  state  of  the 
feelings,  and  a  mild  and  sacerdotal  sympathy  with  all  that  he 
sees.  He  may  feel  contempt,  as  indeed  few  men  are  said  to 
have  done  in  a  greater  degree,  but  he  has  no  art  in  the  ludicrous 
expression  of  it ;  he  sometimes  smiles,  but  he  never  laughs. 
And  in  a  poet  of  actual  English  life,  above  all,  this  is  to  be 
regarded  as  a  considerable  disqualification. 

We  hardly  know  how  to  indicate  what  we  conceive  to  be 
another  deficiency  in  Wordsworth  as  a  poet,  otherwise  than 
by~'repeaEing  the  common  criticism  regarding  him,  that  he 
lacks  energy,  fire,  impulse,  mtensity,  passion.  Our  previous 
remarks  will  have  guarded  against  any  misconception  of  what 
we  here  mean.  We  believe  that  Wordsworth  was,  according 
to  his  own  definition  of  a  poet,  ''  a  man  endowed  with  more 
lively  sensibility,  more  enthusiasm  and  tenderness,  than  are 
supposed  to  be  common  among  mankind ; "  but  what  we  now 
mean  is  something  quite  consistent  with  this.  There  was  no 
tremendousness,  nothing  of  the  demoniac,  nothing  of  the 
Pythic,  in  the  nature  of  Wordsworth. 

"  I  surely  not  a  man  ungently  made," 

are  the  fitting  words  he  uses  in  describing  himself.  A  calm, 
white-haired  man,  that  could  thrill  to  the  beauty  of  a  starry 
night,  and  not  a  swart-faced  Titan  like  Burns,  full  of  strength 
and  fire,  was  the  poet  of  the  Excursion,  With  all  his  pathos, 
and  all  his  clearness  of  vision,  there  were  sorrows  of  humanity 
he  never  touched,  recesses  of  dark  moral  experience  he  could 
not  pierce  nor  irradiate.  We  feel  in  his  poetry  as  if  we  were 
talked  with  by  some  mild  and  persuasive  preacher,  rather 
than  borne  down  by  the  experienced  utterance  of  a  large- 


WORDSWORTH.  387 

hearted  man.  He  does  not  move  us  to  the  depths  of  our 
being ;  he  only  affects  us  gently.  Now,  one  reason  for  this 
must  evidently  be,  that  naturally  and  by  birth  Wordsworth 
was  deficient  in  some  of  the  more  formidable  elements  that 
enter  into  the  constitution  of  man.  Possessing  in  large 
degree  the  elements  of  intellect,  sensibility,  and  imagination, 
he  seems  to  have  been  wanting  in  the  Byronic  element  of 
personal  impetus  or  passion.  Moreover,  and  partly  in  con- 
sequence of  this,  he  appears  to  have  passed  through  the  battle 
of  life  all  but  unwounded.  This  of  itself  would  account  for  the 
placid,  self-possessed,  and  often  feeble  style  of  his  poetry.  In 
the  life  of  every  man  distinguished  for  what  is  called  intensity 
of  character,  there  will  almost  certainly  be  found  some  sore 
biographical  circumstance — some  fact  deeper  and  more  mo- 
mentous than  all  the  rest — some  strictly  historical  source  of 
melancholy,  that  must  be  discovered  and  investigated,  if  we 
would  comprehend  his  ways.  Man  comes  into  this  world 
regardless  and  unformed ;  and  although,  in  his  gradual  pro- 
gress through  it  he  necessarily  acquires,  by  the  mere  use  of 
liis  senses  and  by  communication  with  others,  a  multitudinous 
store  of  impressions  and  convictions,  yet,  if  there  is  to  be 
anything  specific  and  original  in  his  life,  this,  it  would  seem, 
can  only  be  produced  by  the  operation  upon  him  of  some  one 
overbearing  accident  or  event,  that,  rousing  him  to  new  wake- 
fulness, and  evoking  all  that  is  latent  in  his  nature,  shall  bind 
these  impressions  and  convictions  in  a  mass  together,  breathe 
through  them  the  stern  element  of  personal  concern,  and 
impart  to  them  its  seal  and  pressure.  The  experiences  that 
most  commonly  perform  this  great  function  in  the  lives  of 
men  are  those  of  Friendship  and  Love.  The  power  of  Love 
to  rouse  men  to  larger  and  more  fervid  views  of  nature  has 
en  celebrated  since  the  beginning  of  time.  A  man  that  has 
uce  undergone  Love's  sorrow  in  any  extreme  degree,  is  by 
that  fact  awakened  at  once  and  for  ever  to  the  melancholy 
side  of  things ;  he  becomes  alive  to  the  gloomy  in  nature  and 
to  the  miserable  in  life;  and  by  one  stupendous  resumption, 
as  it  were,  of  stars,  clouds,  trees,  and  flowers  into  his  own 
pained  being,   like   an   old   coinage   requiring   re-issue,   he 

C  c  2 


1 


388  WORDSWORTH. 

realizes  how  it  is  that  all  creation  groaneth  and  travaileth 
together  in  spirit  until  now.  So  also,  though  perhaps  more 
rarely,  with  the  influence  of  exalted  and  lost  Friendship. 
But  Wordsworth,  happily  for  himself,  seems  to  have  met 
with  no  such  accident  of  revolution.  Passing  through  the 
world  as  a  pilgrim,  pure-minded,  and  even  sad  with  the  sense 
of  the  mysterious  future,  nothing  occurred  in  his  little  journey 
to  strike  him  down  as  a  dead  man,  and  agonize  him  into  a 
full  knowledge  of  the  whole  mystery  of  the  present.  Hence, 
as  we  believe,  the  want  of  that  intensity  in  his  poetry  which 
we  find  in  the  writings,  not  only  of  the  so-called  subjective 
poets,  such  as  Byron  and  Dante,  but  also  of  the  greatest 
objective  poets,  as  Goethe  and  Shakespeare.  The  ink  of 
Wordsworth  is  never  his  own  blood. 

It  is  little  more  than  an  extension  of  the  preceding  remark, 
to  say  that  Wordsworth  was  rather  a  poet  or  bard  than  (if  we 
may  be  allowed  such  a  distinction)  a  lyrist  or  minstrel.  The 
purpose  of  the  poet,  using  the  term  for  the  moment  in  this 
restricted  sense,  is  simply  to  describe,  narrate,  or  represent 
some  portion  of  the  external,  as  it  is  rounded  out  and  made 
significant  in  his  own  mind;  the  purpose  of  the  lyrist  or 
minstrel  is  to  pour  forth  the  passing  emotions  of  his  soul, 
and  inflame  other  men  with  the  fire  that  consumes  himself. 
Accordingly,  the  faculties  most  special  to  the  merely  poetic 
exercise,  as  in  the  old  Homeric  epos  or  in  modern  descriptive 
verse,  are  those  of  intellect,  sensibility,  and  imagination — 
passion  or  personal  excitement  being  but  a  separate  ingre- 
dient which  may  be  more  or  less  present  according  to  circum- 
stances, and  which  ought,  as  some  think,  to  be  absent  from 
pure  poetry  altogether:  whereas,  in  lyrical  effiision,  on  the 
other  hand,  passion  or  present  excitement  is  nearly  all  in  all. 
The  poetry  of  Keats  may  be  taken  as  a  specimen  of  pure 
poetry  as  such :  all  his  chief  poems  are  literally  compositions 
or  creations,  the  results  of  a  process  by  which  the  poet's  mind, 
having  projected  itself  into  an  entirely  imaginary  element,  as 
devoid  as  possible  of  all  connexion  with  or  similarity  to  the 
present,  worked  and  moved  therein  slowly  and  fantastically 
at  its  own  will  and  pleasure.     As  specimens,  again,  of  the 


WORDSWORTH.  389 

purely  lyrical,  we  have  all  such  pieces,  ancient  and  modern, 
as  are  properly  denominated  psalms,  odes,  hymns,  or  songs. 
When,  therefore,  people  talk,  as  they  now  incessantly  do,  of 
calmness  as  being  essential  to  the  poet;  and  when,  with 
Wordsworth,  they  define  the  poetic  art  to  consist  in  the 
tranquil  recollection  of  bygone  emotion,  it  is  clear  that  they 
can  have  in  view  only  pure  poetry,  the  end  of  which,  as  we 
have  said,  is  to  represent  in  an  imaginative  manner  some 
portion  of  the  outward.  For,  of  the  lyrist  or  song--\vriter  we 
would  affirm,  precisely  as  we  would  affirm  of  his  near  kinsman, 
the  orator,  that  the  more  of  passion  or  personal  impetus  he  has 
the  better ;  and  so  far  from  advising  him  to  wait  for  complete 
tranquillity,  we  would  advise  him  to  select  as  the  true  lyrical 
moment,  that  first  moment,  whenever  it  is,  when  the  primary 
perturbation  of  his  soul  has  just  so  far  subsided  that  his 
trembling  hands  can  sweep  the  strings.  But  along  with  this 
difierence  comes  another.  The  poet,  in  describing  his  scene 
or  narrating  his  story,  feels  himself  impelled  to  every  legiti- 
mate mode  of  increasing  the  pleasure  he  conveys ;  and  the 
result,  in  one  direction,  is  Metre.  But  however  natural  Metre 
may  have  been  in  its  origin,  it  has  now  become  to  the  poet 
rather  a  pre-established  arrangement  or  available  set  of  condi- 
tions to  the  rule  of  which,  voluntarily  and  guided  by  his 
instinct  for  harmony,  he  adapts  what  he  has  already  in  other 
respects  rendered  complete,  than  a  compulsory  suggestion  of 
the  poetic  act  itself  careful  for  its  own  accoutrement.  Not  so, 
however,  with  the  lyrist.  As  cadence  or  musical  utterance  is 
natural  in  an  excited  state  of  the  feelings,  so  in  lyrical  poetry 
ought  the  song  or  melody  to  be  more  than  the  words.  The 
heart  of  the  lyrist  should  be  a  perpetual  fountain  of  song; 
and  when  he  is  to  hold  direct  communication  with  the  world, 
n  inarticulate  hum  or  murmur,  rising,  as  it  were,  from  the 
3pths  of  his  being,  ought  to  precede  and  necessitate  all  his 
actual  speech.  Now  in  this  lyrical  capability,  this  love  of 
sound  or  cadence  for  its  owiisaEer(in  which,  by  the  bye,  we 
have  remarked  that  the  Scotch  generally  excel  the  English,) 
Wordsworth  is  certainly  inferior  to  many  other  poets.  One 
might  have  inferred  as  much  from  the  narrowness   of  his 


390  WORDSWORTH. 

theory  of  verse ;  but  the  fact  is  rendered  still  more  apparent 
by  a  perusal  of  his  poetical  compositions  themselves.  Very 
few  poets,  we  think,  have  been  more  admirable  masters  of 
poetic  metre :  no  versification  that  we  know  is  more  rich, 
various,  and  flexible,  or  more  soothing  to  the  ear  than  that  of 
Wordsworth.  But  he  is  not  a  singer  or  a  minstrel  properly 
so  called ;  the  lyric  madness  does  not  seize  him ;  verse  with 
him  is  rather  an  exquisite  variety  of  rhetoric,  a  legitimate 
aesthetic  device,  than  a  necessary  form  of  utterance.  We  do 
not  think  that  in  all  Wordsworth  there  is  a  single  stanza  after 
reading  which  and  quite  losing  sight  of  the  words,  we  are  still 
haunted  (as  we  constantly  are  in  Burns,  Byron,  and  Tennyson) 
by  an  obstinate  recollection  of  the  tune.  Were  we  required 
to  say  in  what  particular  portion  of  Wordsworth's  poetry  he 
has  shown  most  of  this  true  lyric  spirit,  in  which  we  believe 
him  to  have  been  on  the  whole  deficient,  we  should  unhesitat- 
ingly mention  his  Sonnets.  These  are  among  the  finest  and 
most  sonorous  things  in  our  language ;  and  it  is  by  them,  in 
connexion  with  his  larga  poem  The  Excursion,  or  as  we  may 
now  say,  The  Recluse,  that  his  great  reputation  will  be  most 
surely  perpetuated. 


scottish  influence  in  bkitish 
literature; 

It  was  in  the  winter  of  1786-87  that  the  poet  Burns,  a  new 
prospect  having  been  suddenly  opened  up  to  him  by  the  kind 
intervention  of  Blacklock,  and  a  few  other  influential  men  in 
Edinburgh,  abandoned  his  desperate  project  of  emigrating  to 
the  West  Indies,  and  hastened  to  pay  his  first  and  memorable 
visit  to  the  Scottish  metropolis.  During  that  winter,  as  all 
who  are  acquainted  with  his  life  know,  the  Ayrshire  plough- 
man, then  in  his  twenty-ninth  year,  was  the  lion  of  Edin- 
burgh society.  Lord  Monboddo,  Dugald  Stewart,  Harry 
Erskine,  Dr.  Eobertson,  Dr.  Hugh  Blair,  Henry  Mackenzie, 
Dr.  Gregoiy,  Dr.  Black,  Dr.  Adam  Ferguson — such  were  the 
names  then  most  conspicuous  in  the  literary  capital  of  North 
Britain;  and  it  was  in  the  company  of  these  men,  alternated 
with  that  of  the  Creeches,  the  Smellies,  the  Willie  Nicols, 
and  other  contemporary  Edinburgh  celebrities  of  a  lower 
grade,  that  Bmns  first  realized  the  fact  that  he  was  no  mere 
bard  of  local  note,  but  a  new  power  and  magnate  in  Scottish 
literature. 

To  those  who  are  alive  to  the  poetry  of  coincidences,  two 
anecdotes  connected  with  this  residence  of  Burns  in  Edin- 
burgh will  always  be  interesting.  What  reader  of  Lockhart's 
Life  of  Scott  is  there  who  does  not  remember  the  account 
here  given  of  Scott's  first  and  only  interview  with  Burns  ?  As 
the  story  is  now  more  minutely  told  inMr.Eobert  Chambers's 
Life  of  Burnsy  Scott,  who  was  then  a  lad  of  sixteen,  just 

*  North  British  Eeview  :  August,  1852. — Life  of  Lord  Jeffrey  ;  with  a  Se- 
lection from  his  Correspondence.  By  Lord  Cockburn,  one  of  the  Judges  of  the 
Court  of  Session  in  Scotland.  2  vols.  1852.  [What  is  here  printed  is  only 
the  introductory^part  of  the  article  as  it  stood  in  the  Review.] 


392        SCOTTISH   INFLUENCE   IN  BRITISH  LITERATURE. 

removed  from  the  High  School  to  a  desk  in  his  father's  office, 
was  invited  hj  his  friend  and  companion,  the  son  of  Dr. 
Ferguson,  to  accompany  him  to  Ms  father's  house  on  an 
evening  when  Burns  was  to  be  there.  The  two  youngsters 
entered  the  room,  sat  down  unnoticed  by  their  seniors,  and 
looked  on  and  listened  in  modest  silence.  Burns,  when  he 
came  in,  seemed  a  little  out  of  his  element,  and,  instead  of 
mingling  at  once  with  the  company,  kept  going  about  the 
room,  looking  at  the  pictm'es  on  the  walls.  One  print  par- 
ticularly arrested  his  attention.  It  represented  a  soldier  lying 
dead  among  the  snow,  his  dog  on  one  side,  and  a  woman  with 
a  child  in  her  arms  on  the  other.  Underneath  the  print  were 
some  lines  of  verse  descriptive  of  the  subject,  which  Burns 
read  aloud  with  a  voice  faltering  with  emotion,  A  little  while 
after,  turning  to  the  company  and  pointing  to  the  print,  he 
asked  if  any  one  could  tell  him  who  was  the  author  of  the 
lines.  No  one  chanced  to  know,  excepting  Scott,  who  remem- 
bered that  they  were  from  an  obscure  poem  of  Langhorne's. 
The  information,  whispered  by  Scott  to  some  one  near,  was 
repeated  to  Burns,  who,  after  asking  a  little  more  about  the 
matter,  rewarded  his  young  informant  with  a  look  of  kindly 
interest,  and  the  words,  (Sir  Adam  Ferguson  reports  them,) 
*'  You'll  be  a  man  yet,  sir."  Such  is  the  one  story,  the  story 
of  the  "  literary  ordination,"  as  Mr.  Chambers  well  calls  it,  of 
Scott  by  Burns — a  scene  which  we  think  Sir  William  Allan 
would  have  delighted  to  paint.  The  other  story,  we  believe, 
is  now  told  for  the  first  time  by  Lord  Cockburn.  Somewhere 
about  the  very  day  on  which  the  foregoing  incident  happened, 
"  a  little  black  creature  "  of  a  boy,  we  are  told,  who  was 
going  up  the  High  Street  of  Edinburgh,  and  staring  dili- 
gently about  him,  was  attracted  by  the  appearance  of  a  man 
whom  he  saw  standing  on  the  pavement.  He  was  taking 
a  good  and  leisurely  view  of  the  object  of  his  curiosity,  when 
some  one  standing  at  a  shop-door  tapped  him  on  the  shoulder, 
and  said,  ''  Ay,  laddie,  ye  may  weel  look  at  that  man !  that's 
Eobert  Bums."  The  "little  black  creature,^'  thus  early 
addicted  to  criticism,  was  Francis  Jeffrey,  the  junior  of  Scott 
by  two  years,   and  exactly  four  years  behind  him  in  the 


r 


SCOTTISH  INFLUENCE  IN  BRITISH  LITERATUEE.  393 


classes  of  tlie  High  School,  where  he  was  known  as  a  clever 
nervous  little  fellow,  who  never  lost  a  place  without  crying. 
It  is  mentioned  as  a  curious  fact  by  Lord  Cockburn,  that 
Jeffrey's  first  teacher  at  the  High  School,  a  Mr.  Luke  Fraser, 
had  the  singular  good  fortune  of  sending  forth,  from  three 
successive  classes  of  four  years  each,  three  pupils  no  less 
distinguished  than  Walter  Scott,  Francis  Jeffrey,  and  Henry 
Brougham. 

It  is  not  for  the  mere  purpose  of  anecdote  that  we  cite  these 
names  and  coincidences.  We  should  like  very  much  to  make 
out  for  Scotland  in  general  as  suggestive  a  series  of  her  in- 
tellectual representatives  as  Lord  Cockburn  has  here  made 
out  for  part  of  the  pedagogic  era  of  the  worthy  and  long  dead 
Mr.  Luke  Fraser.  Confining  our  regards  to  the  eighteenth 
century,  the  preceding  paragraphs  enable  us  to  group  together 
at  least  three  conspicuous  Scottish  names  as  belonging,  by 
right  of  birth,  to  the  third  quarter  of  that  century — Bums, 
born  in  Ayrshire  in  1759  ;  Scott,  born  in  Edinburgh  in  1771 ; 
and  Jeffrey,  bom  in  the  same  place  in  1773.  Supposing  we 
go  a  little  farther  back  for  some  other  prominent  Scottish 
names  of  the  same  century,  the  readiest  to  occur  to  the  memory 
will  be  those  of  James  Thomson,  the  poet,  born  in  Koxburgh- 
shire  in  1700 ;  Thomas  Reid,  the  philosopher,  bom  near 
Aberdeen  in  1710  ;  David  Hume,  bom  at  Edinburgh  in  1711 ; 
Kobertson,  the  historian,  born  in  Mid-Lothian  in  1721 ; 
Tobias  Smollett,  tlie  novelist,  born  at  Cardross  in  the  same 
year;  Adam  Smith,  born  at  Kirkaldy  in  1723;  Kobert 
Fergusson,  the  Scottish  poet,  born  at  Edinburgh  in  1750 ; 
and  Dugald  Stewart,  born  at  Edinburgh  in  1753.  And  if  for 
a  similar  purpose,  we  come  down  to  the  last  quarter  of  the 
century,  five  names  at  least  will  be  sure  to  occur  to  us,  in 
addition  to  that  of  Brougham — Thomas  Campbell,  born  at 
/  rlasgow  in  1777 ;  Thomas  Chalmers,  born  at  Anstmther  in 
Fifeshire  in  1780;  John  Wilson,  bom,  if  we  may  trast  our 
authorities,  at  Paisley  in  1788 ;  Thomas  Carlyle,  born  at 
Ecclefechan  in  Dumfries-shire  in  1795;  and  Sir  William 
Hamilton,  born  at  Glasgow  before  the  close  of  the  century. 
In  this  list  we  omit  the  distinguished  contemporary  Scottish 


394  SCOTTISH  INFLUENCE  IN  BRITISH  LITERATURE. 

names  in  physical  science ;  we  oiiglit  not,  however,  to  omit 
the  names  of  Sir  James  Mackintosh,  bom  near  Inverness  in 
1765 ;  and  James  Mill,  born  at  Montrose  in  1773.  The  short 
life  of  Burns,  if  we  choose  him  as  the  central  figure  of  the 
group,  connects  together  all  these  names.  The  oldest  of  them 
was  in  the  prime  of  life  when  Burns  was  born,  and  the 
youngest  of  them  had  seen  the  light  before  Burns  died. 

On  glancing  in  order  along  this  series  of  eminent  Scotch- 
men born  in  the  eighteenth  century,  it  will  be  seen  that  they 
may  be  roughly  distributed  into  two  nearly  equal  classes — 
men  of  philosophic  intellect,  devoted  to  the  work  of  general 
speculation,  or  thought  as  such ;  and  men  of  literary  or  poetic 
genius,  whose  works  belong  more  properly  to  the  category  of 
pure  literary  or  artistic  effort.  In  the  one  class  may  be  ranked 
Reid,  Hume,  Adam  Smith,  Dugald  Stewart,  Mackintosh, 
Mill,  Chalmers,  and  Sir  William  Hamilton;  in  the  other, 
Thomson,  Smollett,  Robertson,  Fergusson,  Burns,  Scott, 
Jeffrey,  Campbell,  Wilson,  Irving,  and  Carlyle.  Do  not  let 
us  be  mistaken.  In  using  the  phrases  ''  philosophic  intellect " 
and  "  literary  genius,"  to  denote  the  distinction  referred  to, 
we  do  not  imply  anything  of  accurate  discrimination  between 
the  phrases  themselves.  For  aught  that  we  care,  the  phrases 
may  be  reversed,  and  the  men  of  the  one  class  may  be  styled 
men  of  philosophic  genius ;  and  those  of  the  other,  men  of 
literary  habit  and  intellect.  If  we  prefer  to  follow  the  popular 
usage  in  our  application  of  the  terms,  it  is  not  with  any 
intention  of  making  out  for  the  one  class,  by  the  appropria- 
tion to  it  of  the  peculiar  term  "  genius,'^  a  certificate  of  a 
higher  kind  of  excellence  than  belongs  to  the  other.  Even 
according  to  the  popular  acceptation  of  the  term,  several  of 
those  whom  we  have  included  in  the  literary  category — as, 
for  example,  Robertson — must  be  denied  the  title  of  men  of 
genius :  while,  according  to  no  endurable  definition  of  the 
term,  could  the  title  of  men  of  genius  be  refused  to  such  men 
as  Adam  Smith,  or  Chalmers,  or  Hamilton.  Nor  even,  when 
thus  explained,  will  our  classification  bear  any  very  rigid 
scrutiny.  By  a  considerable  portion  of  what  may  be  called 
the  fundamental  or  unapparent  half  of  his  genius,  Carlyle 


IP         sc" 


SCOTTISH  INFLUENCE  IN  BRITISH  LITERATURE.  395 

belongs  to  the  class  of  speculative  thinkers ;  while,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  case  of  Chalmers  is  one  in  which  the  thinking 
or  speculative  faculty,  which  certainly  belonged  to  him,  was 
surcharged  and  deluged  by  such  a  constant  flood  from  the 
feelings  that,  instead  of  ranking  him  with  the  thinkers  as 
above,  we  might,  with  equal  or  greater  propriety,  transpose 
him  to  the  other  side,  or  even  name  him  on  both  sides.  His 
thinking  faculty,  which  was  what  he  himself  set  most  store 
by,  was  so  beset  and  begirt  by  his  other  and  more  active  dis- 
positions, that  instead  of  working  on  and  on  through  any 
resisting  medium  with  iron  continuity,  it  discharged  itself 
almost  invariably,  as  soon  as  it  touched  a  subject,  in  large 
proximate  generalizations.  On  the  whole,  then,  instead  of  the 
foregoing  classification  of  eminent  Scotchmen  into  men  of 
speculation  and  men  of  general  literature,  one  might  adopt  as 
equally  serviceable  a  less  formal  classification  which  the 
common  satirical  talk  respecting  Scotchmen  will  suggest.  The 
hard,  cool,  logical  Scotchman — such  is  the  stereotyped  phrase 
in  which  Englishmen  describe  the  natives  of  North  Britain. 
There  is  a  sufficient  amount  of  true  perception  in  the  phrase 
to  justify  its  use ;  but  the  appreciation  it  involves  reaches 
only  to  the  surface.  The  well-known  phrase,  perfervidum 
ingenmm  Scotorum,  used,  Buchanan  tells  us,  centuries  ago  on 
the  Continent  to  express  the  idea  of  the  Scottish  character 
then  universally  current,  and  founded  on  a  large  induction  of 
instances,  is,  in  reality,  far  nearer  to  the  fact.  Without 
maintaining  at  present  that  all  Scotchmen  are  perfervid, — that 
Scotchman  in  general  are,  as  we  have  seen  it  ingeniously 
argued,  not  cool,  calculating,  and  cautious,  but  positively  rash, 
fanatical,  and  tempestuous,— it  will  be  enough  to  refer  to  the 
instances  which  prove  at  least  that  some  Scotchmen  have  this 
qharacter.  The  thing  may  be  expressed  thus  : — On  referring 
L  the  actual  list  of  Scotchmen  who  have  attained  eminence 
by  their  writings  or  speeches  in  this  or  the  last  century,  two 
types  may  be  distinguished,  in  one  or  the  other  of  which  the 
Scottish  mind  seems  necessarily  to  cast  itself— an  intellectual 
type  specifically  Scottish,  but  Scottish  only  in  the  sense  that 
it  is  the  type  which  cultured  Scottish  minds  assume  when 


396  SCOTTISH  INFLUENCE  IN  BRITISH  LITERATURE. 

they  devote  themselves  to  the  work  of  specific  investigation ; 
and  a'more  popular  type,  characterizing  those  Scotchmen  who, 
instead  of  pursuing  the  work  of  specific  investigation,  follow 
a  career  calling  forth  all  the  resources  of  Scottish  sentiment. 
Scotchmen  of  the  first  or  more  fixed  and  formal  type  are 
Keid,  Smith,  Hume,  Mill,  Mackintosh,  and  Hamilton ;  in  all 
of  whom,  notwithstanding  their  difierences,  we  see  that 
tendency  towards  metaphysical  speculation  for  which  the 
Scottish  mind  has  become  celebrated.  Scotchmen  of  the  other 
or  popular  type,  partaking  of  the  metaphysical  tendency  or 
not,  but  drawing  their  essential  inspiration  from  the  senti- 
mental depths  of  the  national  character,  are  Burns,  Scott, 
Chalmers,  Irving,  and  Carlyle.  However  we  may  choose  to 
express  it,  the  fact  of  this  twofold  forthgoing  of  the  Scottish 
mind,  either  in  the  scholastic  and  logical  direction  marked  out 
by  one  series  of  eminent  predecessors,  or  in  the  popular  and 
literary  direction  •  marked  out  by  another  series  of  eminent 
predecessors,  cannot  be  denied. 

After  all,  however,  there  ^5,  classify  and  distinguish  as  we 
may,  a  remarkable  degree  of  homogeneousness  among  Scotch- 
men. The  people  of  North  Britain  are  more  homogeneous — 
have  decidedly  a  more  visible  basis  of  common  character — 
than  the  people  of  South  Britain.  A  Scotchman  may  indeed 
be  almost  anything  that  is  possible  in  this  world ;  he  may  be 
a  saint  or  a  debauchee,  a  Christian  or  a  sceptic,  a  spendthrift 
or  a  usurer,  a  soldier  or  a  statesman,  a  poet  or  a  statistician, 
a  fool  or  a  man  of  genius,  clear-headed  or  confused-headed, 
a  Thomas  Chalmers  or  a  Joseph  Hume,  a  dry  man  of  mere 
secular  facts,  or  a  man  through  whose  mind  there  roll  for  ever 
the  stars  and  all  mysteries.  Still,  under  every  possible  form 
of  mental  combination  or  activity,  there  will  be  found  in  every 
Scotchman  something  distinguishable  as  his  birth-quality  or 
Scotticism,  And  what  is  this  Scotticism  of  Scotchmen — this 
ineradicable,  universally-combinable  element  or  peculiarity, 
breathed  into  the  Scottish  soul  by  those  conditions  of  nature 
and  of  life  which  inhere  in  or  hover  over  the  area  of  the  Scottish 
earth,  and  which  are  repeated  in  the  same  precise  ensemble 
nowhere  else  ?    Comes  it  from  the  hills,  or  the  moors,  or  the 


r 


SCOTTISH  INFLUENCE  IN  BRITISH  LITERATURE.  397 


mists,  or  any  of  those  other  features  of  scenery  and  climate 
which  distinguish  bleak  and  rugged  Scotland  from  green  and 
fertile  England?  In  part,  doubtless,  from  these,  as  from  all 
else  that  is  Scottish.  But  there  are  hills,  and  moors,  and 
mists  where  Scotchmen  are  not  bred ;  and  it  is  rather  in  the 
long  series  of  the  memorable  things  that  have  been  done  on 
the  Scottish  hills  and  moors — the  acts  which  the  retrospective 
eye  sees  flashing  through  the  old  Scottish  mists — that  one  is 
to  seek  the  origin  and  explanation  of  whatever  Scotticism  is. 
Now,  as  compared  with  England  at  least,  that  which  has  come 
down  to  the  natives  of  Scotland  as  something  peculiar,  gene- 
rated by  the  series  of  past  transactions  of  which  their  country 
has  been  the  scene,  is  an  intense  spirit  of  nationality. 

No  nation  in  the  world  is  more  factitious  than  the  Scotch 
— more  composite  as  regards  the  materials  out  of  which  it  has 
been  constructed.  If  in  England  there  have  been  Britons, 
Celts,  Romans,  Saxons,  Danes,  and  Normans,  in  Scotland 
there  have  been  Celts,  Britons,  Eomans,  Norwegians,  Danes, 
Anglo-Saxons,  and  Normans.  The  only  difference  of  any 
consequence  in  this  respect  probably  is,  that  whereas  in 
England  the  Celtic  element  is  derived  chiefly  from  the  British 
or  Welsh,  and  the  Gothic  element  chiefly  from  the  Teutonic 
or  Continental-German  source,  in  Scotland  the  Gaels  have 
furnished  most  of  the  Celtic,  and  the  Scandinavian  Germans 
most  of  the  Gothic  element.  Nor,  if  we  regard  the  agencies  that 
have  acted  intellectually  on  the  two  nations,  shall  we  find 
Scotland  to  have  been  less  notably  affected  from  without  than 
England.  To  mention  only  one  circumstance,  the  Reforma- 
tion in  Scotland  was  marked  by  a  much  more  decided  im- 
portation of  new  modes  of  thinking  and  new  social  forms  than 
the  Reformation  in  the  sister  country.  But  though  quite  as 
I  actitious,  therefore,  as  the  English  nation,  the  Scottish,  by 
reason  of  its  very  smallness,  for  one  thing,  has  always  pos- 
sessed a  more  intense  consciousness  of  its  nationality,  and  a 
greater  liability  to  be  acted  upon  throughout  its  whole  sub- 
stance by  a  common  thought  or  common  feeling.  Even  as  late 
as  the  year  1707,  the  entire  population  of  Scotland  did  not 
exceed  one  million  of  individuals ;  and  if,  going  farther  back, 


398  SCOTTISH  INFLUENCE  IN  BRITISH  LITERATURE. 

we  fancy  this  small  nation  placed  on  the  frontier  of  one  so 
much  larger,  and  obliged  continually  to  defend  itself  against 
the  attacks  of  so  powerful  a  neighbour,  we  can  have  no  diffi- 
culty in  conceiving  how,  in  the  smaller  nation,  the  feeling  of 
a  central  life  would  be  sooner  developed  and  kept  more  con- 
tinuously active.  The  sentiment  of  nationality  is  essentially 
negative;  it  is  the  sentiment  of  a  people  which  has  been 
taught  to  recognise  its  own  individuality  by  incessantly 
marking  the  line  of  exclusion  between  itself  and  others. 
Almost  all  the  great  movements  of  Scotland,  as  a  nation,  have 
accordingly  been  of  a  negative  character,  that  is,  movements 
of  self-defence — the  War  of  National  Independence  against 
the  Edwards  ;  the  Non-Episcopal  struggle  in  the  reigns  of  the 
Charleses ;  and  even  the  Non-Intrusion  controversy  of  later 
times.  The  very  motto  of  Scotland,  as  a  nation,  is  negative 
— Nemo  me  imjpune  lacesset.  It  is  different  with  England. 
There  have  of  course  been  negative  movements  in  England 
too,  but  these  have  been  movements  of  one  faction  or  part  of 
the  English  people  against  another ;  and  the  activity  of  tlie 
English  nation,  as  a  whole,  has  consisted,  not  in  preserving 
its  own  individuality  from  external  attack,  but  in  fully  and 
genially  evolving  the  various  elements  which  it  finds  within 
itself,  or  in  powerful  positive  exertions  of  its  strength  upon 
what  lies  outside  it. 

The  first  and  most  natural  form  of  what  we  have  called  the 
Scotticism  of  Scotchmen — that  is,  of  the  peculiarity  which  dif- 
ferences them  from  people  of  other  countries,  and  more  ex- 
pressly from  Englishmen — is  this  amor  patricB,  this  inordinate 
intensity  of  national  feeling.  There  are  very  few  Scotchmen 
who,  whatever  they  may  pretend,  are  devoid  of  this  pride  of 
being  Scotchmen.  Penetrate  to  the  heart  of  any  Scotchman, 
even  the  most  Anglified,  or  the  most  philosophic  that  can  be 
found,  and  there  will  certainly  be  found  a  remnant  in  it  of 
loving  regard  for  the  little  land  that  lies  north  of  the  Tweed. 
And  what  eminent  Scotchman  can  be  named  in  whose  consti- 
tution a  larger  or  smaller  proportion  of  the  amor  Scotice  has 
not  been  visible  ?  In  some  of  the  foremost  of  such  men,  as 
Burns,  Scott,  and  Wilson,  this  amor  Scotice  has  even  been 


SCOTTISH  INFLUENCE  IN  BRITISH  LITERATURE.  399 

present  as  a  confessed  ingredient  of  their  genius, — a  sentiment 
determining,  to  a  great  extent,  the  style  and  matter  of  all  that 
they  have  written  or  attempted. 

"  The  rough  bur -thistle  spreading  wide 
Amang  the  bearded  bear, — 
I  turn'd  the  weeding-heuk  aside, 
And  spared  the  symbol  dear. 
No  nation,  no  station 

My  envy  e'er  could  raise — 
A  Scot  still,  but  blot  still, 
I  knew  nae  higher  praise." 

In  ^-eading  the  writings  of  such  men,  one  is  perpetually 
reminded,  in  the  most  direct  manner,  that  these  wi'itings  are  to 
be  regarded  as  belonging  to  a  strictly  national  literature.  But 
even  in  those  Scotchmen  in  the  determination  of  whose  intel- 
lectual efforts  the  amor  Scotice  has  acted  no  such  obvious  and 
ostensible  part,  the  presence  of  some  mental  reference  to,  or 
intermittent  communication  of  sentiment  with,  the  land  of 
their  birth,  is  almost  sure  to  be  detected.  The  speculations  of 
Eeid  and  Hume  and  Adam  Smith,  and,  in  some  degree,  also, 
those  of  Chalmers,  were  on  matters  interesting  not  to  Scotch- 
men alone,  but  to  the  human  race  as  such ;  and  yet,  precisely 
as  these  men  enunciated  their  generalities  intended  for  the 
whole  world  in  good  broad  Scotch,  so  had  they  all,  after  tHeir 
different  ways,  a  genuine  Scottish  relish  for  Scottish  humours, 
jokes,  and  antiquities.  The  same  thing  is  true  of  Carlyle,  a 
power  as  he  is  recognised  to  be,  not  in  Scottish  only,  but  in  all 
European  literature.  Even  James  Mill,  who,  more  than  most 
Scotchmen,  succeeded  in  conforming,  both  in  speech  and  in 
writing,  to  English  habits  and  requirements,  relapsed  into  a 
Scotchman  when  he  listened  to  a  Scottish  song,  or  told  a  Scot- 
tish anecdote.  But  perhaps  the  most  interesting  example  of 
the  appearance  of  an  intense  amor  Scotice^  where,  from  the 

t^ture  of  the  case,  it  could  have  been  least  expected,  is  afforded 
y  the  writings  of  Sir  William  Hamilton.  If  there  is  a  man 
now  alive  conspicuous  among  his  contemporaries  for  the  exer- 
cise on  the  most  magnificent  scale  of  an  intellect  the  most 
pure  and  abstract,  that  man  is  Sir  William ;  and  yet,  not  even 
when  discussing  the  philosophy  of  the  unconditioned  or  per- 
fecting the  theory  of  syllogism,  does  Sir  William  forget  his 


400  SCOTTISH  INFLUENCE  IN  BRITISH  LITERATURE. 

Scottish  lineage.  With  what  glee,  in  his  notes,  or  in  stray 
passages  in  his  dissertations  themselves,  does  he  seize  every 
opportunity  of  adding  to  the  proofs  that  speculation  in  general 
has  been  largely  affected  by  the  stream  of  specific  Scottish 
thought — quoting,  for  example,  the  saying  of  Scaliger,  "  Les 
Ecossois  sont  hons  Philosophes ;''''  or  dwelling  on  the  fact  that 
at  one  time  almost  every  continental  university  had  a  Scottish 
professorship  of  philosophy,  specially  so  named ;  or  reviving 
the  memories  of  defunct  Balfours,  and  Duncans,  and  Chal- 
merses, and  Dalgarnos,  and  other  ^'  Scoti  extra  Scotiam 
agentes  "  of  other  centuries ;  or  startling  his  readers  with  such 
genealogical  facts  as  that  Immanuel  Kant  and  Sir  Isaac 
Newton  had  Scottish  grandfathers,  and  that  the  celebrated 
French  metaphysican  Destutt  Tracy  was,  in  reality,  but  a 
transmogrified  Scotchman  of  the  name  of  Stott !  We  know 
nothing  more  refreshing  than  such  evidences  of  strong  na- 
tional feeling  in  such  a  man.  It  is  the  Scottish  Stagirite 
not  ashamed  of  the  bonnet  and  plaid ;  it  is  the  philosopher  in 
whose  veins  flows  the  blood  of  a  Covenanter. 

Even  now,  when  Scotchmen,  their  native  country  having 
been  so  long  merged  in  the  higher  unity  of  Great  Britain, 
labour  altogether  in  the  interest  of  this  higher  unity,  and  for- 
get or  set  aside  the  smaller,  they  are  still  liable  to  be  affected 
characteristically  in  all  that  they  do  by  the  consciousness  that 
they  are  Scotchmen.  This  will  be  found  true  whether  we 
regard  those  Scotchmen  who  work  side  by  side  with  English- 
men in  the  conduct  of  British  public  affairs  or  British  com- 
merce, or  those  Scotchmen  who  vie  with  Englishmen  in  the 
walks  of  British  authorship  and  literature.  In  either  case  the 
Scotchman  is  distinguished  firom  the  Englishman  by  this,  that 
he  carries  the  consciousness  of  his  nationality  about  with  him. 
Were  he,  indeed,  disposed  to  forget  it,  the  banter  on  the 
subject  to  which  he  is  perpetually  exposed  in  the  society  of  his 
English  friends  and  acquaintances,  would  serve  to  keep  him 
in  mind  of  it.  It  is  the  same  now  with  the  individual  Scotch- 
man cast  among  Englishmen  as  it  was  with  the  Scottish 
nation  when  it  had  to  defend  its  frontier  against  the  English 
armies.     He  is  in  the  position  of  a  smaller  body  placed  in 


SCOTTISH  INFLUENCE  IN  BRITISH  LITERATURE.  401 

contact  with  a  larger  one,  and  rendered  more  intensely  consci- 
ous of  his  individuality  by  the  constant  necessity  of  asserting  it. 
But  this  self-assertion  of  a  Scotchman  among  Englishmen, 
this  constant  feeling  "I  am  a  Scotchman,"  rests,  like  the 
feeling  of  nationality  itself,  on  a  prior  assertion  of  what  is  in 
fact  a  negative.  For  a  Scotchman  to  be  always  thinking  "  I 
am  a  Scotchman,^'  is,  in  the  circumstances  now  under  view, 
tantamount  to  always  thinking  "  I  am  not  an  Englishman." 
The  Englishman,  on  the  other  hand,  has  no  con*esponding 
feeling.  As  a  member  of  the  larger  body,  whose  corporate 
activity  has  always,  from  the  very  circumstance  of  its  being 
the  larger,  been  positive  rather  than  negative,  the  Englishman 
simply  acts  out  harmoniously  his  English  instincts  and  ten- 
dencies ;  the  feeling  of  not  being  a  Scotchman  never  (except 
in  the  case  of  a  stray  Englishman  located  in  Scotland)  either 
spontaneously  remaining  in  his  mind,  or  being  roused  in  it  by 
banter.  The  Scotchman,  in  short,  who  works  in  the  general 
field  of  British  activity,  has  his  thoughts  conditioned,  to  some 
extent  at  least,  by  the  negative  of  not  being  an  Englishman ; 
the  Englishman  thinks  under  no  such  limitation. 

And  this  leads  us  to  a  definition  more  essential  and  inti- 
mate of  the  peculiarity  of  Scottish  as  compared  with  English 
thought.  The  rudest  and  most  natural  form  of  what  we  have 
called  the  Scotticism  of  Scotchmen,  consists,  we  have  hitherto 
been  saying,  in  simple  consciousness  of  nationality,  simple 
amor  Scotia,  or,  under  more  restricted  circumstances,  the 
simple  feeling  of  not  being  an  Englishman.  There  are  some 
Scotchmen,  however,  in  whom  this  first  and  most  natural  form 
of  Scotticism  is  not  very  well  pronounced,  and  who  are  either 
emancipated  from  it,  or  think  that  they  are.  We  know  not  a 
few  Scottish  minds  who  have  really  succeeded  in  transferring 
thj  ir  enthusiastic  regards  from  Scotland,  as  such,  to  the  higher 
unity  of  Great  Britain — men,  who,  sometimes  speaking  in 
their  own  Scottish  accent,  sometimes  in  an  accent  almost 
purely  English,  find  the  objects  of  their  solicitude  and 
admiration,  not  in  the  land  lying  north  of  the  Tweed,  but 
rather  in  England — its  rich  green  parks  and  fields,  its  broad 
ecclesiastical  hierarchy,  its  noble  halls  of  learning,  its  majestic 

D  D 


402  SCOTTISH  INFLUENCE  IN  BEITISH  LITERATUEE. 

aixd  varied  literature,  the  full  and  generous  cliaracter  of  its 
manly  people.  We  know  Scotchmen  whose  sentiment  is 
more  deeply  stirred  by  Shakespeare^ s  famous  apostrophe  to 
"  this  England,"  than  by  Scott's  to  the  land  of  brown  heath 
and  shaggy  wood.  And  as  Scotland  and  England  are  now 
united,  such  men  are  and  must  be  on  the  increase.  But  even 
they  shall  not  escape.  If  their  native  quality  of  Scotticism 
does  not  survive  in  them  in  the  more  palpable  and  open  form 
of  mere  national  feeling,  mere  amor  Scotice,  it  survives, 
nevertheless,  in  an  intellectual  habit,  having  the  same  root, 
and  as  indestructible.  And  what  is  this  habit  ?  The  popular 
charges  of  dogmatism,  opinionativeness,  pugnacity,  and  the 
like,  brought  against  Scotchmen  by  Englishmen,  are  so  many 
approximations  to  a  definition  of  it.  For  our  part,  we  should 
say  that  the  special  habit  or  peculiarity  which  distinguishes 
the  intellectual  manifestations  of  Scotchmen — that,  in  short, 
in  which  the  Scotticism  of  Scotchmen  most  intimately  con- 
sists— is  the  habit  of  emphasis.  All  Scotchmen  are  emphatic. 
If  a  Scotchman  is  a  fool,  he  gives  such  emphasis  to  the 
nonsense  he  utters,  as  to  be  infinitely  more  insufferable  than 
a  fool  of  any  other  country ;  if  a  Scotchman  is  a  man  of 
genius,  he  gives  such  emphasis  to  the  good  things  he  has  to 
communicate,  that  they  have  a  supremely  good  chance  of 
being  at  once  or  very  soon  attended  to.  This  habit  of 
emphasis,  we  believe,  is  exactly  that  perfervidum  ingenium 
Scotorum  which  used  to  be  remarked  some  centuries  ago, 
wherever  Scotchmen  were  known.  But  emphasis  is  perhaps 
a  better  word  than  fervour.  Many  Scotchmen  are  fervid 
too,  but  not  all ;  but  all,  absolutely  all,  are  emphatic.  No 
one  will  call  Joseph  Hume  a  fervid  man,  but  he  is  certainly 
emphatic.  And  so  with  David  Hume,  or  Eeid,  or  Adam 
Smith,  or  any  of  those  colder-natured  Scotchmen  of  whom 
we  have  spoken ;  fervour  cannot  be  predicated  of  them,  but 
they  had  plenty  of  emphasis.  In  men  like  Burns,  or 
Chalmers,  or  Irving,  on  the  other  hand,  there  was  both 
emphasis  and  fervour ;  so  also  with  Carlyle ;  and  so,  under  a 
still  more  curious  combination,  with  Sir  William  Hamilton. 
And  as  we  distinguish  emphasis  from  fervour,  so  would  we 


r 


SCOTTISH  INFLUENCE  IN  BEITISH  LITEEATURE.  403 


distinguish  it  from  perseverance.  Scotchmen  are  said  to  be 
persevering,  but  the  saying  is  not  universally  true ;  Scotch- 
men are  or  are  not  morally  persevering,  but  all  Scotchmen 
are  intellectually  emphatic.  Emphasis,  we  repeat,  intellectual 
emphasis,  the  habit  of  laying  stress  on  certain  things  rather 
than  co-ordinating  all,  in  this  consists  what  is  essential  in 
the  Scotticism  of  Scotchmen.  And,  as  this  observation  is 
empirically  verified  by  the  very  manner  in  which  Scotchmen 
enunciate  their  words  in  ordinary  talk,  so  it  might  be  deduced 
scientifically  from  what  we  have  already  said  regarding  the 
nature  and  effects  of  the  feeling  of  nationality.  The  habit 
of  thinking  emphatically  is  a  necessary  result  of  thinking 
much  in  the  presence  of,  and  in  resistance  to,  a  negative ;  it 
is  the  habit  of  a  people  that  has  been  accustomed  to  act  on 
the  defensive,  rather  than  of  a  people  peacefully  self- evolved 
and  accustomed  to  act  positively ;  it  is  the  habit  of  Protes- 
tantism rather  than  of  Catholicism,  of  Presbyterianism  rather 
than  of  Episcopacy,  of  Dissent  rather  than  of  Conformity. 

The  greatest  effects  which  the  Scottish  mind  has  yet  pro- 
duced on  the  world — and  these  effects,  by  the  confession  of 
Englishmen  themselves,  have  not  been  small — have  been  the 
results,  in  part  at  least,  of  this  national  habit  of  emphasis. 
Until  towards  the  close  of  last  century,  the  special  depart- 
ment of  labour  in  which  Scotchmen  had,  to  any  great  extent, 
exerted  themselves  so  as  to  make  a  figure  in  the  general 
intellectual  world,  was  the  department  of  Philosophy — Meta- 
physical and  Dialectic.  Their  triumphs  in  this  department 
are  historical.  What  is  called  the  Scottish  Philosophy  con- 
stitutes, in  the  eyes  of  all  who  know  anything  of  history, 
a  most  important  stage  in  the  intellectual  evolution  of  modern 
times.  From  the  time  of  those  old  Duncans,  and  Balfours, 
aiil  1  Dalgarnos,  mentioned  by  Sir  William  Hamilton,  who 
discoursed  on  philosophy,  and  wrote  dialectical  treatises  in 
Latin  in  all  the  cities  of  the  Continent,  down  to  our  own 
days,  we  can  point  to  a  succession  of  Scottish  thinkers  in 
whom  the  interest  in  metaphysical  studies  was  kept  alive, 
and  by  whose  labours  new  contributions  to  mental  science 
were  continually  being  made.     It  was  by  the  Scottish  mind, 

D  D  2 


404  SCOTTISH  INFLUENCE  IN  BRITISH  LITERATURE. 

in  fact,  that  the  modem  philosophy  was  conducted  to  that 
point  where  Kant  and  the  Germans  took  it  up.  The  quali- 
fications of  the  Scottish  mind  for  this  task,  were,  doubtless, 
various.  Perhaps  there  was  something  in  that  special  combi- 
nation of  the  Celtic  and  the  Scandinavian  out  of  which  the 
Scottish  nation,  for  the  most  part,  took  its  rise,  to  produce  an 
aptitude  for  dialectical  exercises.  Nay,  farther,  it  would  not 
be  altogether  fanciful  to  suppose  that  those  very  national 
struggles  of  the  Scotch  in  the  course  of  which  they  acquired 
so  strong  a  sense  of  their  national  individuality — that  is,  of 
the  distinction  between  all  that  was  Scotch  and  all  that  was 
not  Scotch — served,  in  a  rough  way,  to  facilitate  to  all  Scotch- 
men that  fundamental  idea  of  the  distinction  between  the 
Ego  and  the  Non-Ego,  the  clear  and  rigorous  apprehension  of 
which  is  the  first  step  in  philosophy,  and  the  one  test  of  the 
philosopher.  But,  in  a  still  more  important  degree,  we  hold 
the  success  of  the  Scottish  mind  in  philosophy  to  have  been 
the  result  of  the  national  habit  of  intellectual  emphasis. 
A  Scotchman,  when  he  thinks,  cannot,  so  easily  and  comfort- 
ably as  the  Englishman,  repose  on  an  upper  level  of  pro- 
positions co-ordinated  for  him  by  tradition,  sweet  feeling,  and 
pleasant  circumstance ;  that  necessity  of  his  nature  which 
leads  him  to  emphasise  certain  things  rather  than  to  take  all 
things  together  in  their  established  co-ordination,  drives  him 
down  and  still  down  in  search  of  certain  generalities  whereon 
he  may  see  that  all  can  be  built.  It  was  this  habit  of 
emphasis,  this  inability  to  rest  on  the  level  of  sweetly- 
composed  experience,  that  led  Hume  to  scepticism ;  it  was 
the  same  habit,  the  same  inability,  conjoined  however  with 
more  of  faith  and  reverence,  that  led  Eeid  to  lay  down  in 
the  chasm  of  Hume's  scepticism  certain  blocks  of  ultimate 
propositions  or  principles,  capable  of  being  indi\ddually 
enumerated,  and  yet,  as  he  thought,  forming  a  sufficient 
basement  for  all  that  men  think  or  believe.  And  the  same 
tendency  is  visible  among  Scotchmen  now.  It  amazes 
Scotchmen  at  the  present  day  to  see  on  what  proximate  pro- 
positions even  Englishmen  who  are  celebrated  as  thinkers 
can  rest  in  their  speculations.     The  truth  is  that,  if  Scotch- 


SCOTTISH  INFLUENCE  IN  BRITISH  LITERATURE.  405 

men  have,  so  far,  a  source  of  superiority  over  Englishmen 
in  their  habit  of  dwelling  only  on  the  emphatic,  they  have 
also  in  this  same  habit  a  source  of  inferiority.  Quietism  ; 
mysticism ;  that  soft,  meditative  disposition  which  takes 
things  for  granted  in  the  co-ordination  established  by  mere 
life  and  usage,  pouring  into  the  confusion  thus  externally 
given  the  rich  oil  of  an  abounding  inner  joy,  interpenetrating 
all  and  harmonizing  all — these  are,  for  the  most  part,  alien 
to  the  Scotchman.  No,  his  walk,  as  a  thinker,  is  not  by  the 
meadows  and  the  wheat-fields,  and  the  green  lanes,  and  the 
ivy-clad  parish  churches,  where  all  is  gentle,  and  antique, 
and  fertile,  but  by  the  bleak  sea-shore  which  parts  the 
certain  from  the  limitless,  where  there  is  doubt  in  the  sea- 
mew's  shriek,  and  where  it  is  well  if,  in  the  advancing  tide, 
he  can  find  footing  on  a  rock  among  the  tangle  !  But  this 
very  tendency  of  his  towards  what  is  intellectually  extreme, 
injures  his  sense  of  proportion  in  what  is  concrete  and  actual; 
and  hence  it  is  that  when  he  leaves  the  field  of  abstract 
thought,  and  betakes  himself  to  creative  literature,  he  so 
seldom  produces  anything  comparable  in  fulness,  wealth,  and 
harmoniousness  to  the  imaginations  of  a  Chaucer  or  a  Shake- 
speare. The  highest  genius,  indeed,  involves  also  the  capa- 
bility of  the  intellectually  extreme ;  and  accordingly,  in  the 
writings  of  those  great  Englishmen,  as  well  as  in  those  of 
the  living  English  poet  Tennyson,  there  are  strokes  in 
abundance  of  that  pure  intellectual  emphasis  in  which  the 
Scotchman  delights  ;  but  then  there  is  also  with  them  such  a 
genial  acceptance  of  all  things,  great  or  small,  in  their  estab- 
lished co-ordination,  that  the  flashes  of  emphasis  are  as  if 
they  came  not  from  a  battle  done  on  an  open  moor,  but 
from  a  battle  transacting  itself  in  the  depths  of  a  forest. 
Among  Scottish  thinkers.  Mackintosh  is  the  one  that  ap- 
pj  caches  nearest  to  the  English  model — a  circumstance  which 
may  be  accounted  for  by  the  fact  that  much  of  what  he  did 
consisted,  from  the  necessities  of  the  object-matter  of  his 
speculations,  in  judicious  compromise. 

But  even  in  the  field  of  literature  we  will  not  abandon  the 
Scotchman.     His  habit  of  emphasis  has  here  enabled  him  to 


406  SCOTTISH  INFLUENCE  IN  BRITISH  LITERATURE. 

do  good  service  too.  His  entry  on  this  field,  however,  was 
later  than  his  entry  on  the  field  of  philosophy.  True,  there 
had  been,  contemporary  with  the  Scottish  philosophers,  or 
even  anterior  to  them,  Scottish  poets  and  general  prose- writers 
of  note — Dunbar,  Gawain  Douglas,  King  James,  Buchanan, 
Sir  David  Lindsay,  Henderson,  Sir  George  Mackenzie,  Allan 
Ramsay,  and  the  like.  True,  also,  in  those*  snatches  of 
popular  ballad  and  song  which  came  down  from  generation 
to  generation  in  Scotland — many  of  them  written  by  no  one 
knows  who,  and  almost  all  of  them  overflowing  with  either 
humour  or  melancholy — there  was  at  once  a  fountain  and  a 
promise  of  an  exquisite  national  literature.  We  could  think 
of  old  Nicol  Burn,  the  "  violer,"'  till  our  eyes  filled  with 
tears. 

"  But  minstrel  Burn  cannot  assuage 

His  woes  while  time  endureth, 
To  see  the  changes  of  this  age 

Which  fleeting  time  procureth. 
Full  many  a  place  stands  in  hard  case 

Where  joy  was  wont  beforrow, 
With  Humes  that  dwelt  on  Leader  braes, 

And  Scotts  that  dwelt  on  Yarrow."   , 

There  was  literature  in  the  times  when  such  old  strains 
were  sung.  But  the  true  avatar  of  the  Scottish  mind  in 
modern  literature,  came  later  than  the  manifestation  of  the 
same  mind  in  philosophy.  "Were  we  to  fix  a  precise  date 
for  it,  we  should  name  the  period  of  Burns's  first  visit  to 
Edinburgh  and  familiar  meetings  with  the  men  of  literary 
talent  and  distinction  then  assembled  there.  Edinburgh 
was,  indeed,  even  then  a  literary  capital,  boasting  of  its 
Monboddos,  and  Stewarts,  and  Eobertsons,  and  Blairs,  and 
Mackenzies,  and  Gregorys — men  who  had  already  begun  the 
race  of  literary  rivalry  with  their  contemporaries  south  of  the 
Tweed.  But,  so  far  as  the  literary  excellence  of  these  men 
did  not  depend  on  their  participation  in  that  tendency  to 
abstract  thinking  which  had  already  produced  its  special 
fruit  in  the  Scottish  Philosophy,  it  consisted  in  little  more 
than  a  reflection  or  imitation  of  what  was  already  common 
and  acknowledged  in  the  prior  or  contemporary  literature 
of  South  Britain.      To   write   essays  such  as  those  of  the 


SCOTTISH  INFLUENCE  IN  BRITISH  LITEEATURE.  407 


pronounce  pure,  and  to  produce  compositions  in  that  style 
worthy  of  being  ranked  with  the  compositions  of  English 
authors — such  was  the  aim  and  aspiration  of  Edinburgh 
literati,  between  whom  and  their  London  cousins  there  was 
all  the  difference  that  there  is  between  the  latitude  of  Edin- 
burgh and  the  latitude  of  London,  between  the  daily  use  of 
the  broad  Scotch  dialect  and  the  daily  use  of  the  classic 
English.  For  Scotland  this  mere  imitation  of  English 
models  was  but  a  poor  and  unsatisfactory  vein  of  literary 
enterprise.  What  was  necessary  was  the  appearance  of  some 
man  of  genius  who  should  flash  through  all  that,  and  who,  by 
the  application  to  literature,  or  the  art  of  universal  expression, 
of  that  same  Scottish  habit  of  emphasis  which  had  already 
produced  such  striking  and  original  results  in  philosophy, 
should  teach  the  Scottish  nation  its  true  power  in  literature, 
and  show  a  first  example  of  it.  Such  a  man  was  Burns.  He  it 
was  who,  uniting  emotional  fervour  with  intellectual  emphasis, 
and  drawing  his  inspiration  from  all  those  depths  of  sentiment 
in  the  Scottish  people  which  his  predecessors,  the  philosophers, 
had  hardly  so  much  as  touched,  struck  for  the  first  time  a 
new  chord,  and  revealed  for  the  first  time  what  a  Scottish 
writer  could  do  by  trusting  to  the  whole  wealth  of  Scottish 
resources.  And  from  the  time  of  Burns,  accordingly,  there 
has  been  a  series  of  eminent  literary  Scotchmen  quite  different 
from  that  series  of  hard  logical  Scotchmen  who  had  till  then 
been  the  most  conspicuous  representatives  of  their  country  in 
the  eyes  of  the  reading  public  of  Great  Britain — a  series  of 
Scotchmen  displaying  to  the  world  the  power  of  emphatic 
sentiment  and  emphatic  expression  as  strikingly  as  their 
predecessors  had  displayed  the  power  of  emphatic  reasoning. 
W^ile  the  old  philosophic  energy  of  Scotland  still  remained 
unexhausted — the  honours  of  Keid,  and  Hume,  and  Smith, 
and  Stewart  passing  on  to  such  men  as  Brown,  and  Mill, 
and  Mackintosh,  and  Hamilton  (in  favour  of  the  last  of 
whom  even  Germany  has  resigned  her  philosophic  inter- 
regnum)— the  specially  literary  energy  which  had  been 
awakened  in  the  country  descended  along  another  line  in  the 


408  SCOTTISH  INFLUENCE  IN  BRITISH  LITERATURE. 

persons  of  Scott,  and  Jeffrey,  and  Chalmers,  and  Campbell, 
and  Wilson,  and  Carlyle.  Considering  the  amount  of  in- 
fluence exerted  by  such  men  upon  the  whole  spirit  and  sub- 
stance of  British  literature,  considering  how  disproportionate 
a  share  of  the  whole  literary  produce  of  Great  Britain  in  the 
nineteenth  century  has  come  either  from  them  or  from  other 
Scotchmen,  and  considering  what  a  stamp  of  peculiarity  marks 
all  that  portion  of  this  produce  which  is  of  Scottish  origin, 
it  does  not  seem  too  much  to  say,  that  the  rise  and  growth 
of  Scottish  literature  is  as  notable  a  historical  phenomenon 
as  the  rise  and  growth  of  the  Scottish  philosophy.  And 
considering,  moreover,  how  lately  Scotland  has  entered  on 
this  literary  field,  how  little  time  she  has  had  to  display  her 
powers,  how  recently  she  was  in  this  respect  savage,  and 
how  much  of  her  savage  vitality  yet  remains  to  be  articu- 
lated in  civilized  books,  may  we  not  hope  that  her  literary 
avatar  is  but  beginning,  and  has  a  goodly  course  yet  to  run  ? 
From  the  Solway  to  Caithness  we  hear  a  loud  Amen ! 


THEORIES  OF  POETEY.* 

There  have  been  hundreds  of  disquisitions  on  poetry  in  all 
ages — long  and  short,  good,  bad,  and  indifferent;  and  now-a- 
days,  we  cannot  open  a  magazine  or  a  review  without  finding 
something  new  said  about  our  friend  "  The  Poet,"  as  distin- 
guished from  our  other  friend  "  The  Prophet,"  and  the  like. 
But  cant  cannot  be  helped ;  and,  if  we  are  to  abandon  good 
phrases  because  they  have  been  used  a  gi-eat  many  times, 
there  is  an  end  to  all  reviewing.  Much,  too,  as  has  been 
spoken  about  poetry  and  poets,  we  doubt  if  the  world,  in  its 
lucubrations  on  this  subject,  has  got  far  beyond  the  antithesis 
suggested  by  what  Aristotle  said  about  it  two  thousand  years 
ago,  on  the  one  hand,  and  what  Bacon  advanced  two  hundred 
and  fifty  years  ago,  on  the  other.  At  least,  acquainted  as  we 
are  with  a  good  deal  that  Wordsworth,  and  Coleridge,  and 
Goethe,  and  Leigh  Hunt,  and  now  Mr.  Dallas,  have  written 
about  poetry  by  way  of  more  subtle  and  insinuating  investi- 
gation, we  still  feel  that  the  best  notion  of  the  thing,  for  any 
manageable  purpose,  is  to  be  beaten  out  of  the  rough-hewn 
definitions  of  it,  from  opposite  sides,  supplied  by  Aristotle  and 
Bacon.     In  his  Poetics,  Aristotle  writes  as  follows  : — 

"  Epic  poetry  and  the  poetry  of  tragedy,  as  well  as  comedy  and  dithyrambic 
poetry,  and  most  flute  and  lyre  music,  all  are,  in  their  nature,  viewed  generally, 
imitations  {fxifx-ncreis) ;  differing  from,  each  other,  however,  in  three  things — 
either  in  that  they  imitate  by  different  means,  or  in  that  they  imitate  dif- 
ferent things,  or  in  that  they  imitate  differently  and  not  in  the  same  manner. 
For,  as  some  artists,  either  from  technical  training  or  from  mere  habit,  imitate 
various  objects  by  colours  and  forms,  and  other  artists  by  vocal  sound;  so,  of 
the  "rts  mentioned  above,  all  effect  their  imitation  by  rhythm,  and  words  and 
melov  y,  employed  either  severally  or  in  combination.  For  example,  in  flute 
and  lyre  music,  and  in  any  other  kind  of  music  having  similar  effect,  such 
as  pipe  music,  melody  and  rhythm  are  alone  used.  In  the  dance,  again, 
the  imitation  is  accomplished  by  rhythm  by  itself,  without  melody; 
there  being  dancers  who,  by  means  of  rhythmical  gesticulations,  imitate 
even  manners,  passions,  and  acts.  Lastly,  epic  poetry  produces  its  imita- 
tions  either  by   mere   articulate   words,   or   by  metre   superadded 

*  North  British  Review;  August,  1S53.— Poetics :  an  Essay  on  Poetry. 
By  E.  S.  Dallas.     London,  1852. 


410  THEORIES  OF  POETRY. 

Since,  in  the  second  place,  those  who  imitate  copy  living  characters,  it  behoves 
imitations  either  to  be  of  serious  and  lofty,  or  of  mean  and  trivial  objects.  The 
imitation  must,  in  fact,  either  be  of  characters  and  actions  better  than  they 
are  found  among  ourselves,  or  worse,  or  much  the  same ;  just  as,  among 
painters,  Polygnotus  represented  people  better-looking  than  they  were,  Pauson 
worse-looking,  and  Dionysius  exactly  as  they  were.  Now,  it  is  evident  that 
each  of  the  arts  above  mentioned  will  have  these  differences,  the  difference 
arising  from  their  imitating  different  things.  In  the  dance,  and  in  flute  and 
lyre  music,  these  diversities  are  visible ;  as  also  in  word-imitations  and  simple 
metre.  Homer,  for  example,  really  made  men  better  than  they  are  ;  Cleophon 
made  them  such  as  they  are  ;  whereas  Hegemon,  the  first  writer  of  parodies, 
and  Nicochares,  made  them  worse.  So  also  in  dithyrambics  and  lyrics,  one 
might,  with  Timotheus  and  Philoxenus,  imitate  even  Persians  and  Cyclopses. 
By  this  very  difference,  too,  is  tragedy  distinguished  from  comedy.  The  one 
even  now  strives  in  its  imitations  to  exhibit  men  better  than  they  are,  the  other 
worse.  .  .  .  Still  the  third  difference  remains,  namely,  as  to  the  manner  or  form 
of  the  imitation.  For  even  though  the  means  of  imitation,  and  the  things 
imitated,  should  be  the  same,  there  might  be  this  difference,  that  the  imi- 
tation might  be  made  either  in  the  form  of  a  narration,  (and  that  either 
through  an  alien  narrator,  as  Homer  does,  or  in  one's  own  person  without 
changing,)  or  by  representing  the  imitators  as  all  active  and  taking  part. 
So  that,  though  in  one  respect  Homer  and  Sophocles  would  go  together  as  imi- 
tators, as  both  having  earnest  subjects,  in  another  Sophocles  and  Aristophanes 

would  go  together,  as  both  imitating  dramatically Two  causes,  both  of 

them  natural,  seem  to  have  operated  together  to  originate  the  poetic  art.  The 
first  is,  that  the  tendency  to  imitate  is  innate  in  men  from  childhood,  (the 
difference  between  man  and  other  animals  being  that  he  is  the  most  imitative 
of  all,  acquiring  even  his  first  lessons  in  knowledge  through  imitation,)  and 
that  all  take  pleasure  in  imitation.  Moreover,  in  the  second  place,  just  as  the 
tendency  to  imitate  is  natural  to  us,  so  also  is  the  love  of  melody  and  of 
rhythm ;  and  metre  is  evidently  a  variety  of  rhythm.  Those,  therefore,  who 
from  the  first  were  most  strongly  inclined  to  these  things  by  nature,  pro- 
ceeding by  little  and  little,  originated  poetry  out  of  their  impromptu  fancies. 
Poetry,  thus  originated,  was  broken  into  departments  corresponding  to  the 
peculiar  characters  of  its  producers ;  the  more  serious  imitating  only  beau- 
tiful actions  and  their  issues,  while  the  more  thoughtless  natures  imitated 
mean  incidents,  inventing  lampoons,  as  others  had  invented  hymns  and 
eulogies.  Pefore  Homer  we  have  no  poem  of  any  kind  to  be  mentioned  ; 
though,  doubtless,  many  existed." 

Sucli,  as  indicated  in  those  sentences  of  tlie  treatise  which 
seem  to  be  of  most  essential  import,  is  the  general  doctrine  of 
Aristotle  as  to  the  nature  of  Poetry.  With  this  contrast 
Bacon's  theory-j  as  stated,  cursorily  but  profoundly,  in  the 
following  sentences  from  the  Advancement  of  Learning : — 

"  The  parts  of  human  learning  have  reference  to  the  three  parts  of  man's 
understanding,  which  is  the  seat  of  learning — History  to  his  Memory ;  Poesy 

to  his  Imagination  ;  and  Philosophy  to  his  Reason Poesy  is  a  part  of 

learning,  in  measure  of  words  for  the  most  part  restrained,  but  in  all  other 
points  extremely  licensed,  and  doth  truly  refer  to  the  imagination ;  which, 
being  not  tied  to  the  laws  of  matter,  may  at  pleasure  join  that  which  Nature 
hath  severed,  and  sever  that  which  Nature  hath  joined,  and  so  make  unlawful 
matches  and  divorces  of  things.  Pictorihus  atque  Poetis,  &c.  It  (Poetiy)  is 
taken  in  two  senses — in  respect  of  words,  or  matter.  In  the  first  sense,  it  is 
but  a  chai'acter  of  style,  and  belongeth  to  the  arts  of  speech,  and  is  not 
pertinent  for  the  present ;  in  the  latter,  it  is,  as  hath  been  said,  one  of  the 
principal  portions  of  learning,  and  is  nothing  else  but  feigned  history,  which 


I 


THEORIES  OF   POETRY.  411 


may  be  styled  as  well  in  prose  as  in  verse.  The  use  of  this  feigned  history 
hath  been  to  give  some  shadow  of  satisfaction  to  the  mind  of  man  in  the 
points  wherein  the  nature  of  things  doth  deny  it — the  world  being  in  proportion 
inferior  to  the  soul ;  by  reason  whereof  there  is,  agreeable  to  the  spirit  of 
man,  a  more  ample  greatness,  a  more  exact  goodness,  and  a  more  absolute 
variety  than  can  be  found  in  the  nature  of  things.  Therefore,  because  the 
acts  or  events  of  true  history  have  not  that  magnitude  which  satisfieth  the 
mind  of  man,  Poesy  feigneth  acts  and  events  greater  and  more  heroical ; 
because  true  history  propoundeth  the  successes  and  the  issues  of  actions  not 
so  agreeable  to  the  merits  of  virtue  and  vice,  therefore  Poesy  feigneth  them 
more  just  in  retribution,  and  more  according  to  revealed  Providence ;  because 
true  history  representeth  actions  and  events  more  ordinary  and  less  inter- 
changed, therefore  Poesy  endueth  them  with  more  rareness,  so  as  it  appeareth 
that  Poesy  serveth  and  conferreth  to  magnanimity,  morality,  and  delectation. 
And,  therefore,  it  was  ever  thought  to  have  some  participation  of  divineness, 
because  it  doth  raise  and  erect  the  mind,  by  submitting  the  shows  of  things 
to  the  desires  of  the  mind,  whereas  Reason  doth  buckle  and  bow  the  mind 

unto  the  nature  of  things In  this  third  part  of  learning,  which  is 

Poesy,  I  can  report  no  deficience.  For,  being  as  a  plant  that  cometh  of  the 
lust  of  the  earth  without  a  formal  seed,  it  hath  sprung  up  and  spread  abroad 
mpre  than  any  other  kind." 

Now,  though  it  would  be  possible,  we  doubt  not,  so  to 
stretch  and  comment  upon  Aristotle's  theory  of  poetry  as  to 
make  it  correspond  with  this  of  Bacon's,  j&i^  prima  facie^  the 
two  theories  are  different,  and  even  antithetical.     If  both  are 
true,  it  is  because  the  theorists  tilt  at  opposite  sides  of  the 
shield.    Aristotlejnakes  the  essence  of  poetry  to  consist  in  its    ; 
beingjmitative  and  truthful ;  Bacon,  in  its  being  creative  and  -^ 
fantastical.    According  to  Aristotle,  there  is  a  natural  tendency 
in  men  to  the  imitation  of  what  they  see  in  nature ;  the  various 
arts  are  nothing  more   than   imitations,   so   to  speak,   with 
different  kinds  of  imitating  substance ;  and  poetry  is  that  art 
which  imitates  in  articulate  language,  or,  at  most,  in  language 
elevated  and  rendered  more  rich  and  exquisite  by  the  addition 
of  metre.     According  to  Bacon,  on  the  other  hand,  there  is 
a  natural  tendency  and  a  natural  prerogative  in  the  mind  of 
man,  to  condition  the  universe  anew  for  its  own  intellectual 
satisfaction ;    to   brood,  as  it  were,  over  the  sea  of  actual 
existences,    carrying    on   the   work   of  creation  with   these 
existences  for  the  material,  and  its  own  phantasies  and  long- 
ings for  the  informing  spirit;  to.be  ever  on  the  wing  among.  ] 
nature's  sounds  and  appearances,  not  merely  for  the  purpose  X 
of^^serving  and  co-ordinating  them,  but  also  that  it  may  • 
delight   itself  with  new  ideal   combinations,  severing  what 
^ture  has  jomed,  and  joining  what  nature  has  put  asunder. 
Poetry,   in   accordance   with   this   view,  might   perhaps   be  '~ 


412  THEORIES  OF   POETRY. 

defined  as  the  art  of  producing,  by  means  of  articulate  lan- 
J  guage,  metrical  or  unmetrical,  a  fictitious  concrete  ;  this  being 
either  like  to  something  existing  in  nature,  or,  if  unlike  any- 
thing there  existing,  justifying  that  unlikeness  by  the  charm 
of  its  own  impressiveness. 

Amid  all  the  discussions  of  all  the  critics  as  to  the  nature 
of  poetry,  this  antagonism,  if  such  it  is,  between  the  Aristote- 
lian and  the  Baconian  theories,  will  be  found  eternally  repro- 
ducing itself.  When  Wordsworth  defined  poetry  to  be 
"  emotion  recollected  in  tranquillity,"  and  declared  it  to  be 
the  business  of  the  poet  to  represent  out  of  real  life,  and  as 
nearly  as  possible  in  the  language  of  real  life,  scenes  and 
events  of  an  affecting  or  exciting  character,  he  reverted,  and 
with  good  effect,  to  the  imitation-theory  of  Aristotle.  All 
Coleridge's  disquisitions,  on  the  other  hand,  even  when  his 
friend  Wordsworth  is  the  theme  and  exemplar,  are  subtle 
,  developments  of  the  imagination-theory  of  Bacon.  His  famous 
remark  that  the  true  antithesis  is  not  Poetry  and  Prose,  but 
Poetry  and  Science,  is  but  another  form  of  Bacon's  remark,"" 
that  whereas  it  is  the  part  of  Reason  "  to  buckle  and  bow  the 
mind  to  the  nature  of  things,"  it  is  the  part  of  Imagination, 
as  the  poetical  faculty,  "  to  raise  the  mind  by  submitting  the 
shows  of  things  to  its  desires."  And  so  with  the  definitions, 
\  more  or  less  formal,  of  other  writers.  Thus  Leigh  Hunt : — 
"Poetry  is  the  utterance  of  a  passion  for  truth,  beauty,  and 
power,  embodying  and  illustrating  its  conceptions  by  ima- 
gination and  fancy,  and  modulating  its  language  on  the 
J  principle  of  variety  in  uniformity.^^  That  this  definition, 
\notwithstanding  that  it  is  constructed  on  the  principle  of 
omitting  nothing  that  any  one  would  like  to  see  included,  is 
yet  essentially  a  glimpse  from  the  Baconian  side  of  the  shield, 
is  obvious  from  the  fact  that  its  author  afterwards  uses  as 
synonymous  with  it  the  abbreviations  "  Imaginative  passion," 
*'  Passion  for  imaginative  pleasure.^' — Lastly,  Mr.  Dallas,  with 
all  his  ingenuity,  does  not  really  get  much  farther  in  the  end. 
Beginning  with  an  expression  of  dissatisfaction  with  all 
existing  definitions  of  poetry,  Aristotle's  and  Bacon's  included, 
as  being  definitions  of  the  thing  not  in  itself,  but  in  its  acci- 


THEORIES  OF  POETRY.  413 

dents,  he  proceeds  first,  very  properly,  to  make  a  distinction 
between  poetical  feeling,  which  all  men  have,  and  the  art  of 
poetical  expression,  which  is  the  prerogative  of  those  who  are 
called  poets.  Both  are  usually  included  under  tlie  term 
Poetry ;  but,  to  avoid  confusion,  Mr.  Dallas  proposes  to  use 
the  general  term  Poetry  for  the  poetical  feeling,  and  to  call 
the  art  which  caters  for  that  feeling  Poesy.  Then,  taking  for 
his  clue  the  fact  that  all  have  agreed  that,  whatever  poetry  is, 
it  has  pleasure  for  its  end,  he  seeks  to  work  his  way  to  the 
required  definition  through  a  prior  analysis  of  the  nature  of 
pleasure.  Having,  as  the  result  of  this  analysis,  defined 
pleasure  to  be  "  the  harmonious  and  unconscious  activity  of 
tlie  soul,"  he  finds  his  way  then  clear.  For  there  are  various 
kinds  of  pleasure,  and  poetry  is  one  of  these — it  is  "  imaginative 
pleasure;"  or,  writing  the  thing  more  fully  out,  it  is  the 
*'  imaginative  harmonious  and  unconscious  activity  of  the  soul," 
or  that  kind  of  harmonious  and  unconscious  activity  of  the  soul 
which  consists  in  the  exercise  of  the  imagination.  Poesy,  of 
course,  is  the  corresponding  art,  the  art  of  producing  what 
will  give  imaginative  pleasure.  Now,  with  all  our  respect  for 
tlie  ability  with  which  Mr.  Dallas  conducts  his  investigation, 
and  our  relish  for  the  many  lucid  and  deep  remarks  which 
drop  from  his  pen  in  the  course  of  it.  we  must  say  that,  as 
respects  the  main  matter  in  discussion,  his  investigation  does 
not  leave  us  fully  satisfied.  *'  Poetry  is  imaginative  plea- 
sure " — very  well ;  but  Bacon  had  said  substantially  the  same 
thing  when  he  described  poetry  as  a  part  of  learning  having 
reference  to  the  imagination;  and  Leigh  Hunt  had,  as  we 
have  seen,  anticipated  the  exact  phrase,  defining  poetry  to  be 
"  imaginative  passion,"  and  the  faculty  of  the  poet  to  be 
the  faculty  of  "  producing  imaginative  pleasure.^'  In  short, 
the  whole  difficulty,  the  very  essence  of  the  question,  consists 
not  in  the  word  'pleasure^  but  in  the  word  imaginative.  Had 
Mr.  Dallas  bestowed  one-half  the  pains  on  the  illustration  of 
what  is  meant  by  imagination,  that  he  has  bestowed  on  the 
analysis  of  what  is  meant  by  pleasure,  he  would  have  done 
the  science  of  poetry  more  service.  This — the  nature  of  the 
imaginative  faculty— is   "the  vaporous  drop   profound   that 


414  THEORIES  OF  POETRY. 

hangs  upon  the  corner  of  the  moon/^  and  Mr.  Dallas  has  not 
endeavoured  to  catch  it.  His  chapter  upon  the  Law  of 
Imagination  is  one  of  the  most  cursory  in  the  book ;  and  the 
total  result,  as  far  as  a  serviceable  definition  of  poetry  is  con- 
cerned, is  that  he  ends  in  finding  himself  in  the  same  hut 
with  Bacon,  after  having  refused  its  shelter. 

The  antagonism  between  the  Aristotelian  theory,  which 
makes  poetry  to  consist  in  imitative  passion,  and  the  Baconian 
theory,  which  makes  it  to  consist  in  imaginative  passion,  is 
curiously  reproducing  itself  at  present  in  the  kindred  art  of 

painting.     Pre-Raphaelitism  is  in  painting  very  much  what 

the  reform  led  by  Wordsworth  was  in  poetical  literature.  Imi- 
tate nature ;  reproduce  her  exact  and  literal  forms  ;  do  not  paint 
ideal  trees  or  vague  recollections  of  trees,  ideal  brick-walls  or 
vague  recollections  of  brick-walls,  but  actual  trees  and  actual 
,/  brick-walls ;  dismiss  from  your  minds  the  trash  of  Sir  Joshua 
r  Eeynolds  about  "  correcting  nature,"  "  improving  nature,"  and 
the  like  ; — such  are  the  maxims  addressed  by  the  Pre-Raphael- 
ites,  both  with  brush  and  with  pen,  to  their  fellow-artists.  All 
this  is,  we  say,  a  return  to  the  theory  of  Aristotle,  which  makes 
the  essence  of  art  to  consist  in  Imitation,  and  a  protest  against 
that  of  Bacon,  which  makes  the  essence  of  art  to  consist 
in  Idealization.  Poor  Sir  Joshua  Eeynolds  ought  to  fall  back 
upon  Bacon,  so  that  when  he  is  next  attacked  for  his  phrases 
^'  improving  nature,^^  and  the  like,  the  Pre-Eaphaelites  may 
see  looming  behind  him  the  more  formidable  figure  of  a  man 
whose  words  no  one  dares  to  call  trash,  and  whose  very 
definition  of  art  was  couched  in  expressions  like  these : — 
''  There  is,  agreeable  to  the  spirit  of  man,  a  more  ample 
greatness,  a  more  exact  goodness,  and  a  more  absolute  variety 
than  can  be  found  in  the  nature  of  things ; "  "  The  use  of 
feigned  history  is  to  give  to  the  mind  of  man  some  shadow  of 
satisfaction  in  those  points  wherein  the  nature  of  things  doth 
deny  it.''  The  battle,  we  say,  must  be  fought  with  these 
phrases.  Nor  is  the  battle  confined  to  the  art  of  painting. 
There  is  a  more  restricted  kind  of  Pre-Eaphaelitism  now 
making  its  way  in  the  department  of  fictitious  literature. 
Admiring  the  reality,  the  truthfulness  of  Thackeray's  deli- 


THEORIES  OF   POETRY.  415 

neations  of  life  and  society,  there  are  men  who  will  have 
nothing  to  do  with  what  they  call  the  phantasies  and  carica- 
tures of  the  Dickens  school.  The  business  of  the  novelist, 
they  say,  is  to  represent  men  as  they  are,  with  all  their  foibles 
as  well  as  their  virtues ;  in  other  words,  to  imitate  real  life. 
Here  again  comes  in  the  Baconian  thunder.  "  Because  the 
acts  or  events  of  true  history  have  not  that  magnitude  which 
satisfieth  the  mind  of  man,  poesy  (and  Bacon's  definition  of 
poesy  includes  the  prose  fiction)  feigneth  acts  and  events 
greater  and  more  heroical.^'  Whether  Dickens  can  take  the 
benefit  of  this  authority  in  those  cases  where  he  is  charged 
with  unreality,  we  need  not  inquire ;  it  evidently  points,  how- 
ever, to  a  possible  style  of  prose  fiction  different  from  that  of 
Fielding  and  Thackeray,  and  yet  as  legitimate  in  the  view  of  art. 

For  ourselves,  we  hold  the  Imitation  theory  as  applied  to\ 
poetry  or  art  to  be  so  inadequate  in  essential  respects  that  it  ] 
would  be  time  lost  to  try  to  mend  it ;  and  we  findja(i_suitable  / 
statement  of  what  seems  to  us  to  be  the  very  idea  of  j)oetry, 
except  in  some  definition  tantamount  to  that  of  Bacon^_Only 
consider  the  matter  for  a  moment.  Take  any  piece  of  verse 
from  any  poet,  and  in  what  single  respect  can  that  piece  of 
verse  be  said  to  be  an  imitation  of  nature  ?  In  the  first  place, 
that  it  is  verse  at  all  is  a  huge  deviation  in  itself  from  what 
is,  in  any  ordinary  sense,  natural.  Men  do  not  talk  in  good 
literary  prose,  much  less  in  blank  verse  or  rhyme.  Macbeth, 
in  his  utmost  strait  and  horror — Lear,  when  the  lightnings 
scathed  his  white  head — did  not  actually  talk  in  metre.  Even 
Bruce  at  Bannockburn  did  not  address  his  army  in  trochees. 
Here,  then,  at  the  very  outset,  there  is  a  break-down  in  the 
theory  of  Imitation,  or  literal  truth  to  nature.  And  all  v 
prose  literature  shares  in  this  break-down.  Not  a  single  per- 
sonage in  Scott's  novels  would  have  spoken  precisely  as 
Scott  m^kes  them  speak ;  nay,  nor  is  there  a  single  character 
in  Thackeray  himself  strictly  and  in  every  respect  a  fac-simile 
of  what  is  real.  Correct  grammar,  sentences  of  varied  lengths 
and  of  various  cadences,  much  more  octosyllabic  or  pentameter 
verse,  and  still  more  rhymed  stanzas,  are  all  artificialities. 
Literature  has  them,  but  in  real  life  they  are  not  to  be  found. 


416  THEORIES  OF   POETRY. 

It  is  as  truly  a  deviation  from  nature  to  represent  a  king  talk- 
ing in  blank  verse,  or  a  lover  plaining  in  rhyme,  as  it  is,  in 
an  opera,  to  make  a  martyr  sing  a  song  and  be  encored  before 
being  thrown  into  the  flames.  So  far  as  truth  to  nature  is 
concerned,  an  opera,  or  even  a  ballet,  is  hardly  more  artificial 
than  a  drama.  Supposing,  however,  that,  in  order  to  escape 
from  this  difficulty,  it  should  be  said  that  metre,  rhyme,  rheto- 
rical consecutiveness^  and  the  like,  are  conditions  previously  and 
for  other  reasons  existing"  in  the  material  in  which  the  imita- 
tion is  to  take  place,  would  the  theory  of  imitation  or  truth  to 
nature  even  then  hold  good  ?  Let  it  be  granted  that  gramma- 
tical and  rhythmical  prose  is,  as  it  were,  a  kind  of  marble,  that 
blank  verse  is,  as  it  were,  a  kind  of  jasper,  and  that  rhymed 
verse  is,  as  it  Avere,  a  kind  of  amethyst  or  opaline ;  that  the 
selection  of  these  substances  as  the  materials  in  which  the 
imitation  is  to  be  effected  is  a  thing  already  and  independently 
determined  on ;  and  that  it  is  only  in  so  far  as  imitation  can 
be  achieved  consistently  with  the  nature  of  these  substances 
that  imitation  and  art  are  held  to  be  synonymous.  Will  the 
theory  even  then  look  the  facts  in  the  face  ?  It  will  not.  In 
the  time  of  Aristotle,  indeed,  when  most  Greek  poetry  was,  to 
p  a  greater  degree  than  poetry  is  now,  either  directly  descriptive 
1  or  directly  narrative,  the  theory  might  have  seemed  less  astray 
than  it  must  to  us.  Even  then,  however,  it  was  necessarily  at 
fault.  The  Achilles  and  the  Ajax  of  Homer,  the  CEdipus  and 
the  Antigone  of  Sophocles,  were,  in  no  sense,  imitations  from 
nature ;  they  were  ideal  beings,  never  seen  on  any  JEgean 
coast,  and  dwelling  nowhere  save  in  the  halls  of  imagination. 
Aristotle  himself  felt  this  ;  and  hence,  at  the  risk  of  cracking 
into  pieces  his  own  fundamental  theory,  he  indulges  occasion- 
ally in  a  strain  like  that  of  Bacon  when  he  maintains  that 
poetry  ''  representeth  actions  and  events  less  ordinary  and 
interchanged,  and  endue th  them  with  more  rareness,"  than  is 
found  in  nature.  "  The  poet's  business,"  says  Aristotle,  "  is 
not  to  tell  events  as  they  have  actually  happened,  but  as  they 
possibly  might  happen."  And  again  :  "  Poetry  is  more  philo- 
sophical and  more  sublime  than  history."  Very  true,  but 
what  then  becomes  of  the  imitation  ?     In  what  possible  sense 


I 


THEORIES  OF   POETRY.  417 


can  there  be  imitation  unless  where  there  is  something  to  be 
imitated  ?  If  that  something  is  ideal,  if  it  exists  not  actually 
and  outwardly,  but  only  in  the  mind  of  the  artist,  then  imita- 
tion is  the  wrong  word  to  use.  ,  And  all  this  will  be  much 
more  obvious  if  we  refer  to  modern  poetry.  Here  is  a  stanza 
from  Spenser — part  of  his  description  of  the  access  to  Mam- 
mon's cave.  He  has  just  described  Kevenge,  Jealousy,  Fear^ 
Shame,^and  other  entities. 

"  And  over  them  sad  Horror  with  grim  hue 
Did  always  soar,  beating  his  iron  wings  ; 
And  after  him  owls  and  night-ravens  flew, 
The  hateful  messengers  of  heavy  things, 
Of  death  and  dolour  telling  sad  tidings; 
"Whiles  sad  Celeno,  sitting  on  a  clift, 
A  song  of  bale  and  bitter  sorrow  sings, 
That  heart  of  flint  asunder  could  have  rift ; 
Which  having  ended,  after  him  she  flieth  swift." 

This  is  true  poetry ;  and  yet,  by  no  possible  ingenuity,  short 
of  that  which  identified  King  Jeremiah  with  pickled  cucumbers, 
could  it  be  shown  to  consist  of  imitation.  If  it  be  said  that  it 
is  mimic  creation,  and  that  this  is  the  sense  in  which  Aristotle 
meant  his  imitation,  or  jujuiricnc,  to  be  understood,  we  shall 
be  very  glad  to  accept  the  explanation ;  but  then  we  shall 
have  to  say,  in  reply,  that  as  the  essence  of  the  business  lies 
in  the  word  "  creation  "  as  the  substantive  of  the  phrase,  it  is 
a  pity  the  brunt  of  the  disquisition  should  have  been  borne  so 
long  by  the  adjective.  Aristotle,  we  believe,  did  mean  that 
poetry  was,  in  the  main,  fiction,  or  invention  of  fables  in  imita- 
tion of  nature ;  but,  unfortunately,  even  then  he  misleads  by 
making  imitation,  which  is  but  the  jackal  in  the  treatise, 
seem  the  lion  in  the  definition.  Nor  even  then  will  his  theory 
be  faultless  and  complete.  Spenser's  grim-hued  Horror  soar- 
ing aloft,  beating  his  iron  wings,  and  with  owls  and  night- 
ravens  after  him,  is  certainly  a  creation ;  but  in  what  sense  it 
is  a  mimic  creation,  or  a  creation  in  imitation  of  nature,  it 
would  take  a  critic,  lost  to  all  reasonable  use  of  words,  to  show. 
In  short,  and  to  close  this  discussion  with  a  phrase  which 
seems  to  us  to  fall  like  a  block  of  stone  through  all  our  puny 
contemporary  reasonings  about  art  imitating  nature,  being  true 
to  nature,  and  the  like — "  Art  is  ca/Ze^  art/'  said  Goethe, 
*'  simply  because  it  is  not  nature."     This,  it  will  be  seen,  is 


418  THEORIES   OF   POETRY. 

identical  with  Bacon's  poesy  "  submitting  the  shows  of  things 
to  the  desires  of  the  mind."  Only  in  one  sense  can  it  be  said 
that  the  art  itself  comes  under  the  denomination  of  nature. 
Thus,  Shakespeare — 

"  E'en  that  art, 
Wh-ich,  you  say,  adds  to  nature,  is  an  art 
That  nature  makes." 

True,  as  Goethe  would  have  been  the  first  to  admit !  In  this 
sense,  Spenser's  grim-hued  Horror  beating  his  iron  wings  was 
a  part  of  nature,  seeing  that,  in  this  sense,  the  poet's  own  soul, 
with  that  very  imagination  starting  out  of  it,  was  involved 
and  contained  in  the  universal  round.  But  in  any  sense  in 
which  the  words  art  and  nature  are  available  for  the  purposes 
of  critical  exposition,  Goethe's  saying  is  irrefragable — "  Art 
is  called  art  simply  because  it  is  not  nature."     Dissolve  the 

^  poet  through  nature,  regard  the  creative  act  itself  as  a  part  of 
nature,  and  then,  of  course,  poetry  or  art  is  truth  to  nature  ; 

'  but  keep  them  distinct,  as  you  must  do  if  you  talk  of  imita- 
tion, and  then  the  poet  is  nature's  master,  changer,  tyrant, 
lover,  watcher,  slave,  and  mimic,  all  in  one,  his  head  now  low 
in  her  lap,  and  again,  a  moment  after,  she  scared  and  weeping, 
that,  though  he  is  with  her,  he  minds  her  not. 

All  this,  we  believe,  is  very  necessary  to  be  said.  Pre- 
Kaphaelitism  in  painting,  like  Wordsworth's  reform  in  poeti- 
cal  literatm-e,    (which   reform   consisted   in  the  precept  and 

-^.  example  of  what  may  be  called  Pre-Drydenism,)  we  regard, 
so  far  as  it  is  a  recall  of  art  to  truth  and  observation,  as 
an  unmixed  good.  But  it  is  essentially,  in  this  particu- 
lar respect,  a  reform  only  in  the  language  of  art ;  and  art 
itself  is  not  language,  but  the  creative  use  of  it.  We 
think  the  Pre-Raphaelites  know  this;  for  though,  in  the- 
orizing, they  naturally  put  forward  their  favourite  idea  of 
imitation  or  truthfulness,  yet  in  their  practice  they  are  as 
much  imaginative  artists  as  imitative.  Take  any  of  the  higher 
Pre-Raphaelite  paintings,  and  while  the  language  of  the  paint- 
ing— that  is,  the  flowers,  and  grasses,  and  foliage,  and  brick- 
walls,  and  costumes — are  more  real  and  true  imitations  than 
are  to  be  seen  elsewhere,  the  thought  which  this  language  is 
used  to  convey  is  at  least  as  ideal,  as  much  a  supposition, 
imagination,  or  recombination,  as  much  a  mere  wish  or  utinam, 


THEORIES   OF   POETRY.  419 

as  in  the  majority  of  other  pictures.  Still,  in  our  theory  of 
art  at  the  present  day,  or  at  least  in  our  theory  of  literary  art, 
the  notion  of  imitation  is  beginning  to  exist  in  excess.  The 
very  power  of  that  most  admirable  novelist,  Thackeray, 
is  beginning  to  spoil  us.  We  will  have  nothing  but  reality, 
nothing  but  true  renderings  of  men  and  women  as  they  are ; 
no  giants  or  demigods  any  more,  but  persons  of  ordinary  sta- 
ture, and  the  black  and  the  white  in  character  so  mixed  that 
people  shall  neither  seem  crows  nor  white  doves,  but  all  more 
or  less  magpies.  Good,  certainly,  all  this  ;  but  had  the  rule 
always  been  peremptory,  as  some  would  now  make  it,  where 
had  been  our  Achilleses,  our  Prometheuses,  our  Tancreds,  our 
Lears,  our  Hamlets,  our  Fausts,  our  Egmonts  ;  these  men  that 
never  were,  these  idealizations  of  what  might  be — not  copied 
from  nature,  but  imagined  and  full  fashioned  by  the  soul  of 
man,  and  thence  disenchained  into  nature,  magnificent  phan- 
tasms, to  roam  amid  its  vacancies  ?  Nor  will  it  do  to  exempt 
the  epic  and  the  tragic  muses,  and  to  subject  to  the  rule  only 
the  muse  of  prose  fiction.  Where,  in  that  case,  had  been  our 
Quixotes,  our  Pantagruels  and  Panurges,  our  Tvanhoes 
and  Rebeccas,  our  Fixleins  and  Siebenkaeses  ?  These  were 
sublimations  of  nature,  not  imitations ;  suggestions  to  history 
by  brain  and  genius  and  an  inspired  philosophy.  The  muse 
of  prose  literature  is  very  hardly  dealt  with.  We  see  not  why, 
in  prose,  there  should  not  be  much  of  that  mighty  licence  in 
the  fantastic,  that  measured  riot,  that  right  of  whimsy,  that 
unabashed  dalliance  with  the  extreme  and  the  beautiful,  which 
the  world  allows,  by  prescription,  to  verse.  Why  may  not 
one  in  prose  chase  forest-nymphs,  and  see  little  green-eyed 
elves,  and  delight  in  peonies  and  musk-roses,  and  invoke  the 
stars,  and  roll  mists  about  the  hills,  and  watch  the  seas  thun- 
dering through  caverns,  and  dashing  against  promontories? 
Why,  in  prose,  quail  from  the  grand  or  ghastly  on  the  one 
hand,  or  blush  with  shame  at  too  much  of  the  exquisite  on  the 
other  ?  Is  prose  made  of  iron  ?  Must  it  never  weep,  must  it 
never  laugh — never  linger  to  look  at  a  buttercup,  never  ride  at 
a  gallop  over  the  downs?  Always  at  a  steady  trot,  transacting 
only  such  business  as  may  be  done  within  the  limits  of  a  soft 

E  E  2 


420  THEORIES   OF  POETRY. 

sigh  on  the  one  hand,  and  a  thin  smile  on  the  other,  must  it 
leave  all  finer  and  higher  work  of  imagination  to  the  care  of 
sister  Verse  ?  Partly  so,  perhaps ;  for  prose  soon  gets  ashamed 
of  itself,  and,  when  very  highly  inspired,  lifts  itself  into  verse. 
Yet  it  is  well  for  literature  that  we  have  still  such  men  among 
us  as  De  Quincey  and  Christopher  North — prose-poets  to  us, 
as  Richter  was  to  the  Germans ;  men  avoiding  nothing  as  too 
fantastic  for  their  element,  but  free  and  daring  in  it  as  the 
verse-poet  in  his ;  fronting  the  grisliest  shapes,  ascending  to 
the  farthest  heights,  descending  to  the  lowest  depths,  pursuing 
the  quaintest  conceits ;  all  the  while,  too,  such  masters  of  the 
element  itself;  now  piling  sound  on  sound  into  a  great  organ- 
symphony,  now  witching,  as  with  harp-music,  now  letting  the 
sense  die  away  in  cadence,  like  the  echoes  of  a  bugle  blown 
among  the  hills.  All  honour  to  Thackeray  and  the  prose-fiction 
of  social  reality  ;  but  let  us  not  so  theorize  as  to  exclude  from 
prose-fiction,  when  we  can  get  it,  the  boundless  imagination 
of  another  Eichter,  or  even  the  lawless  zanyism  of  another 
Rabelais. 

Poetry,  then,  we  must,  after  all,  define  in  terms  tantamount, 

/or  thereabouts,  to  those  of  Bacon.     With  Bacon  himself  we 

j  may  define  it  vaguely  as  having  reference  to  the  imagination, 

I*'  which  faculty  submitteth  the  shows  of  things  to  the  desires 

\pf  the  mind,  whereas  reason  doth  buckle  and  bow  the  mind 

unto  the  nature  of  things."    Or  we  may  vary  the  phrase,  and, 

with  Coleridge,  call  it,  ''the  vision  and  faculty  divine;"  or, 

with   Leigh   Hunt,    "imaginative  passion,"  the  passion  for 

"  imaginative  pleasure;"  or,  with  Mr.  Dallas,  more  analytically, 

"  the  imaginative,  harmonious,  and  unconscious  activity  of  the 

soul."    In  any  case,  imagination  is^the  main  word,  the  main 

idea.     Upon  this  Shakespeare  himself  has  put  his  seal. 

"  The  lunatic,  the  lover,  a&d  the  poet, 
Ai'e  of  imagination  all  compact." 

In  short,  poesy  is  what  the  Greek  language  recognised  it  to 

be — 7roiif)(Tig,  or  creation.   The  antithesis,  therefore,  is  between 

^  Poetry  and  Science — woiriaiQ  and  voriaig.    Let  the  universe  of 

all  accumulated  existence,  inner  and  outer,  material  and  mental, 

up  to  the  present  moment,  lie  under  one  like  a  sea,  and  there 

\ 


THEORIES  OF   POETRY.  421 

ire  two  ways  in  which  it  may  be  intellectually  dealt  with  and 
brooded  over.     On  the  one  hand,  the  intellect  of  man  may 
brood  over  it  inquiringly,  striving  to  penetrate  beneath  it,  to 
understand  the  system  of  laws  by  which  its  multitudinous 
atoms  are  held  together,  to  master  the  mystery  of  its  pulsations 
and  sequences.    This  is  the  mood  of  the  man  of  science.    On 
the  other  hand,  the  intellect  of  man  may  brood  over  it  crea-  |  ^ 
tively,  careless  how  it  is  held  together,  or  whether  it  is  held  , 
together  at  all,  and  regarding  it  only  as  a  great  accumulation/ 
of  material  to  be  submitted  farther  to  the  operation  of  a  com-\ 
bining  energy,  and  lashed  and  beaten  up  into  new  existences.  ! 
This  is  the  mood  of  the  poet.     The  poet  is  emphatically  the  (  "" 
man  who  continues  the  work  of  creation  ;  who  forms,  fashions, 
combines,  imagines  ;  who  breathes  his  own  spirit  into  things ; 
who  conditions  the  universe  anew  according  to  his  whim  and 
pleasure ;  who  bestows  heads  of  brass  on  men  when  he  likes, 
and  sees  beautiful  women  with  arms  of  azure ;  who  walks  amid 
Nature's  appearances,  divorcing  them,  rematching  them,  inter- 
weaving them,  starting  at  every  step,  as  it  were,  a  flock  of 
white- winged  phantasies  that  fly  and  flutter  into  the  heaven  of 
the  future. 

All  very  well ;  but,  in  plain  English,  what  is  meant  by  this 
imagination,  this  creative  faculty,  which  is  allowed  by  all  to 
be  the  characteristic  of  the  poet  ?  Mr.  Dallas  will  tell  you 
that  psychologists  differ  in  their  definitions  of  imagination. 
Dugald  Stewart,  and  others,  he  says,  have  regarded  it  solely 
as  the  faculty  which  looks  to  the  possible  and  unknown,  which 
invents  hippogriffs  and  the  like  ideal  beasts — in  short,  the 
creative  faculty  proper.  Mr.  Dallas  properly  maintains  that 
this  is  not  sufficient,  and  that  the  faculty  unphilosophically 
called  Conception — that  is,  the  faculty  which  mirrors  or  re- 
produces the  real — must  also  be  included  in  the  poetic  imagi- 
nation.    And  this  is  nearly  all  that  he  says  on  the  subject. 

Now,  if  we  were  to  venture  on  a  closer  definition,  such  as 
might  stand  its  ground,  and  be  found  applicable  over  the 
whole  length  and  breadth  of  poetry,  we  should,  perhaps, 
affirm  something  to  the  following  effect: — The  poetic  or 
imaginative  faculty  is  the  power  of  intellectually  producing  a 


422  THEORIES  OF   POETRY. 

\i  new  or  artificial  concrete ;  and  the  poetic  genius  or  tempera- 
ment is  that  disposition  of  mind  which  leads  hahitually,  or  hy 
preferences  to  this  kind  of  intellectual  exercise.  There  is  much 
in  this  statement  that  might  need  explanation.  In  the  first 
place,  we  would  call  attention  to  the  words  "  intellectually 
producing/'  "  intellectual  exercise.^^  These  words  are  not 
needlessly  inserted.  It  seems  to  us  that  the  distinct  recogni- 
tion of  what  is  implied  in  these  words  would  save  a  great 
deal  of  confusion.  The  phrases  *'  poetic  fire,"  *'  poetic  pas- 
sion,^' and  the  like,  true  and  useful  as  they  are  on  proper 
occasion,  are  calculated  sometimes  to  mislead.  There  is  fire, 
there  is  passion  in  the  poet ;  but  that  which  is  peculiar  in  the 
poet,  that  which  constitutes  the  poetic  tendency  as  such,  is  a 
special  intellectual  habit,  distinct  from  the  intellectual  habit 
of  the  man  of  science.  The  poetic  process  may  be  set  in 
operation  by,  and  accompanied  by,  any  amount  of  passion  or 
feeling;  but  the  poetic  process  itself,  so  far  as  such  distinctions 
are  of  any  value,  is  an  intellectual  process.  Farther,  as  to  its 
kind,  it  is  the  intellectual  process  of  producing  a  new  or 
artificial  concrete.  This  distinguishes  poetry  at  once  in  all  its 
varieties,  and  whether  in  verse  or  in  prose,  from  the  other 
forms  of  literature.  In  scientific  or  expository  literature  the 
tendency  is  to  the  abstract,  to  the  translation  of  the  facts  and 
appearances  of  nature  into  general  intellectual  conceptions 
and  forms  of  language.  In  oratorical  literature,  or  the  litera- 
ture of  moral  stimulation,  the  aim  is  to  urge  the  mind  in  a 
certain  direction,  or  to  induce  upon  it  a  certain  state.  There 
remains,  distinct  from  either  of  these,  the  literature  of  the 
concrete,  the  aim  of  which  is  to  represent  the  facts  and 
appearances  of  nature  and  life,  or  to  form  out  of  them  new 
concrete  combinations.  There  are  men  who  delight  in  things 
simply  because  they  have  happened,  or  because  they  can 
imagine  them  to  happen — men,  for  example,  to  whom  it  is  a 
real  pleasure  to  know  that  at  such  and  such  a  time  a  knight 
in  armour  rode  along  that  way  and  across  that  bridge  ;  who 
have  an  infinite  relish  for  such  a  fact  as  that  Sulla  had  a  face 
mottled  white  and  red,  so  that  an  Athenian  wit  compared  it  to 
a  mulberry  dipped  in  meal ;  who  can  go  back  to  that  moment. 


I 


THEORIES  OF   POETRY.  423 


ay,  and  re-arrest  time  there,  as  in  a  picture,  when  Manlius 
hung  half-way  down  the  Tarpeian  rock,  and  had  his  death  of 
blood  yet  beneath  him,  or  when  Marie  Antoinette  lay  under 
the  axe,  and  it  had  not  fallen ;  men,  to  whom  also  the  mere 
embodiments  of  their  own  fancy  or  of  the  fancy  of  others 
are  visions  they  never  tire  to  doat  and  gaze  on.  These  are 
the  votaries  of  the  concrete.  Now,  so  far  as  that  literature  of 
the  concrete  whose  business  it  is  to  gratify  such  feelings,  deals 
merely  with  (the  actual  factsjof  the  past  as  delivered  to  it  by 
memory,  it  resolves  itself  into  the  department  of  history ; 
while,  so  far  as  it  remains  unexhausted  by  such  a  subduction, 
it  is  poetry  or  creative  literature.  We  speak,  of  course  theo- 
retically ;  in  practice,  as  all  know,  the  two  shade  into  each 
other,  the  historian  often  requiring  and  displaying  the  ima- 
gination of  the  poet,  and  the  poet,  on  the  other  hand,  often 
relapsing  into  the  describer  and  the  historian.  And  here  it  is 
that  one  part  of  our  definition  may  be  found  fault  with.  See- 
ing that  the  poet  does  not  necessarily,_in  every  case,  invent 
scenes  and  incidents  totally  ideal,  but  often  treats  poetically 
the  actual  fields  and  landscapes  of  the  earth  and  the  real 
incidents  of  life — seeing,  in  fact,  that  much  of  our  best  and 
most  genuine  poetry  is  descriptive  and  historical — why  define 
poesy  to  be  the  production  of  a  new  or  artificial  concrete  ? 
Why  not  call  it  either  the  reproduction  of  an  old  or  the 
production  of  a  new  concrete?  There  is,  we  believe,  no 
objection  to  calling  it  so,  except  that  the  division  which  would 
be  thus  established  is  not  fundamental,  ^i^eyer^piece,  of 
poetry,  we  believe,  even  the  most  descriptive  and  historical, 
that  which  makes  it  poetical  is  not  the  concrete  as  furnished  by 
sheer  recollection,  but  the  concrete  as  shaped  and  bodied  forth 
anew  by  the  poet's  thought — that  is,  as,  in  the  strictest  sense, 
factitious  and  artificial.  Shelley,  indeed,  very  sweetly  calls 
poetry  "  the  record  of  the  best  and  happiest  moments  of  the 
best  and  happiest  minds;"  but  then  this  only  refers  us 
farther  back  in  time  for  the  poetry,  which  certainly  does  not 
consist  in  the  act  of  recording,  if  it  he  only  recording,  but 
already  lay  in  the  good  and  happy  moments  that  are  recorded. 
Thus,  if  it  be  said  that  the  beautiful  passage  in  Wordsworth 


424  THEORIES  OF   POETRY. 

describing  a  winter  landscape,  witli  the  lake  on  whicli  he 
skated  with  his  companions  in  his  boyhood,  is  a  mere  tran- 
script of  a  scene  from  recollection,  we  reply,  that,  if  it  be  so, 
(which  we  do  not  admit,)  then  the  poetry  of  the  passage  was 
transacted  along  with  the  skating,  and  the  critic,  instead  of 
watching  the  man  at  his  writing-table,  must  keep  by  the  side 
of  the  boy  on  the  ice.  In  short,  in  every  case  whatever, 
poetry  is  the  production  of  an  artificial  concrete  —  artificial 
either  in  toto,  or  in  so  far  as  it  is  matter  of  sense  or  memory 
worked  into  form  by  the  infusion  of  a  meaning.  The  word 
artificial,  we  know,  has  bad  associations  connected  with  it ; 
but,  as  Hazlitt  said  of  Allegory,  the  word  is  really  a  harmless 
word,  and  won't  bite  you.  It  is  only  necessary  to  see  what  it 
means  here  to  invest  it  with  all  that  is  splendid. 
"  The  poetical  tendency,  then,  is  the  tendency  to  that  kind  of 
mental  activity  which  consists  in  the  production,  we  might 
almost  say  secretion,  by  the  mind  of  an  artificial  concrete ;  and 
the  poetic  genius  is  that  kind  or  condition  of  mind  to  which  this 
kind  of  activity  is  constitutionally  most  delightful  and  easy. 
\  Of  the  legitimacy  and  nobleness  of  such  a  mode  of  activity  what 
need  is  there  to  say  anything  ?  With  some  theorists,  indeed, 
poets  are  little  better  than  privileged  liars,  and  poetry  is  little 
better  than  the  art  of  lying  so  as  to  give  pleasure.  Even 
Bacon,  with  his  synonyms  of  "  feigned  history^'  and  the  like, 
evidently  means  to  insinuate  a  kind  of  contempt  for  poetry  as 
compared  with  philosophy.  The  one  he  calls  ''  the  theatre," 
where  it  is  not  good  to  stay  long ;  the  other  is  the  "judicial 
place  or  palace  of  the  mind."  This  is  natural  enough  in  a 
man  the  tenor  of  whose  own  intellectual  work  must  have 
inclined  him,  apart  even  from  the  original  constitutional  bias 
whicli  determined  that^  to  prefer  the  exercise  which  "  buckled 
and  bowed  the  mind  to  the  nature  of  things,"  to  the  exercise 
which  "  elevates  the  mind  by  submitting  the  shows  of  things 
to  its  desires."  But  recognising,  as  he  did,  that  the  one 
exercise  is,  equally  with  the  other,  the  exercise  of  a  faculty 
which  is  part  and  parcel  of  the  human  constitution,  he  was 
not  the  man  to  go  very  far  with  the  joke  about  poets  being  a 
species  of  liars.     That,  we  believe,  was  Bentham's  fun.     One 


THEORIES  OF   POETRY.  425 

can  see  what  a  good  thing  the  old  gentleman  might  have 
made  of  it.  "  Why  was  that  poor  fellow  transported  ?  Why, 
the  fact  is,  at  last  assizes,  he  originated  a  piece  of  new 
concrete,  which  the  law  calls  perjury."  But  the  joke  may  be 
taken  by  the  other  end.  When  that  deity  of  the  Grecian 
mythology,  (if  the  Grecian  mythology  had  such  a  deity,) 
whose  function  it  was  to  create  trees,  walked  one  sultry  day 
over  the  yet  treeless  earth,  big  with  unutterable  thought,  and 
when,  chancing  to  lie  down  in  a  green  spot,  the  creative 
phrenzy  came  upon  him,  his  thought  rushed  forth,  and,  with  a 
w^hirr  of  earthy  atoms  all  round  and  a  tearing  of  turf,  the 
first  of  oaks  sprang  up  completed,  that  also  was  the  origina- 
tion of  a  new  piece  of  concrete,  but  one  could  hardly  say  that 
it  was  telling  a  lie.  Had  his  godship  been  a  philosopher 
instead  of  a  poet — had  he  buckled  and  bowed  his  mind  to 
the  nature  of  things  instead  of  accommodating  the  shows  of 
things  to  his  desires — the  world  might  have  been  without 
oaks  to  this  very  day. 

Poetical  activity  being  defined  generally  to  be  that  kind 
of  intellectual  activity  which  results  in  the  production,  or,  as 
one  might  say,  deposition  by  the  mind,  of  new  matter  of  the 
concrete,  it  follows  that  there  are  as  many  varieties  in  the 
exercise  of  this  activity  as  there  are  possible  forms  of  an 
intellectual  concrete.  To  attempt  a  complete  enumeration  of 
the  various  ways  in  which  imaginative  activity  may  show 
itself,  would  be  almost  hopeless ;  an  instance  or  two,  how- 
ever^ may  bring  some  of  the  more  common  of  them  before 
the  mind. 

"The  sun  had  just  sunk  below  the  tops  of  the  mountains,  whose  long 
shadows  stretched  athwart  the  valley ;  but  his  sloping  rays,  shooting  through 
an  opening  of  the  cliffs,  touched  with  a  yellow  gleam  the  summits  of  the 
forest  that  hung  upon  the  opposite  steeps,  and  streamed  in  full  splendour 
upon  the  towers  and  battlements  of  a  castle  that  spread  its  extensive  ramparts 
along  the  brow  of  a  precipice  above.  The  splendour  of  these  illuminated 
objects  was  heightened  by  the  contrasted  shade  which  involved  the  valley 
below." — Mbs.  Radcliffe. 

"  Almost  at  the  root 
Of  that  tall  pine,  the  shadow  of  whose  bare 
And  slender  stem,  while  here  I  sit  at  eve, 
Oft  stretches  towards  me,  like  a  long  straight  path, 
Traced  faintly  on  the  greensward — there,  beneath 
A  plain  blue  stone,  a  gentle  dalesman  lies." — WoBDSWORTH. 


426  THEOKIES   OF  POETRY. 

These  are  plain  instances  of  that  kind  of  imaginative 
exercise  which  consists  in  the  imagination  of  scenes  or  objects, 
A  large  proportion  of  the  imaginative  activity  of  men 
generally,  and  of  authors  in  particular,  is  of  this  species. 
It  includes  pictures  and  descriptions  of  all  kinds,  from  the 
most  literal  reproductions  of  the  real,  whether  in  country  or 
town,  to  the  most  absolute  phantasies  in  form  and  colour ; 
and  from  the  scale  of  a  single  object,  such  as  the  moon  or 
a  bank  of  violets,  to  the  scale  of  a  Wordsworthian  landscape, 
or  of  a  Milton's  universe  with  its  orbs  and  interspaces.  It 
V    may  be  called  descriptive  imagination. 

"And  Priam  tlien  alighted  from  his  chariot, 
Leaving  Idseus  with  it,  who  remained 
Holding  the  mules  and  horses ;  and  the  old  man 
Went  straight  in-doors,  where  the  beloved  of  Jove 
Achilles  sat,  and  found  him.     In  the  room 
Were  others,  but  apart ;  and  two  alone — 
The  hero  Automedon  and  Alcinous, 
A  branch  of  Mars — stood  by  him.    They  had  been 
At  meals,  and  had  not  yet  removed  the  board. 
Great  Priam  came,  without  their  seeing  him, 
And,  kneeling  down,  he  clasped  Achilles'  knees, 
And  kissed  those  terrible  homicidal  hands 
Which  had  deprived  him  of  so  many  sons." — Homer. 

J      This   is  the  imagination  of  iuQident,  or  narrative  imagi- 
nation.    The  instance  is  plain  even  to  baldness— it  is  direct 
Homeric  narration;   but  for  this  very  reason  it  will  better 
stand  as  a  type   of  that    large   department  of  imaginative 
activity  to  which  it  belongs.    In  this  department  are  included 
all  narrations  of  incidents,  whether  historical  and  real,   or 
,       fictitious  and  horribly  supernatural ;  from  the  scale,  too,  of 
y  — ■  thef  single  incident\s  told  in  a  ballad,  or  incidentally  as  a 
link  in  a  continuous  story,  up  to  the  sustained  unity  of  the 
epos   or  drama,   as  in    Crusoe^  Don  Quixote,  the  Iliad,  the 
Divine  Comedy,  the  Faery  Queene,  Macheth,  or  Paradise  Lost. 
r^It  is  unnecessary  to  point  out  that  the  narration  of  incident 
\  always  involves  a  certain  amount  of  description  of  scenery. 

"  The  Reve  was  a  slender  colerike  man, 
His  beard  was  shave  as  nigh  as  ever  he  can, 
His  hair  was  by  his  ears  round  yshorn. 
His  top  was  docked  like  a  priest  beforne. 
Full  longe  were  his  legg^s  and  full  lean, 
yiike  a  staff;  there  was  no  calf  yseen." — Chaucer. 


I 


THEORIES  OF   POETRY.  427 


This  may  stand  as  a  specimen  of  what  is  in  reality  a  sub- 
variety  of  the  imaginative  exercise  first  mentioned,  but  is 
important  enough  to  be  adverted  to  apart.  It  may  be  called 
the  imagination  of  physiognomy  and  costume,  under  which 
head  might  be  collected  an  immense  number  of  passages  from 
all  quarters  of  our  literature.  This  department,  too,  will 
include  both  the  real  and  ideal — the  real,  as  in  Chaucer's 
and  Scott's  portraits  of  men  and  women ;  the  ideal,  as  in 
Spenser's  personifications,  in  Ariosto's  hippogrifF,  or  in 
Dante's  Nimrod  in  a  pit  in  hell,  with  his  face  as  large  as 
the  dome  of  St.  Peter's,  and  his  body  in  proportion,  blowing 
a  horn,  and  yelling  gibberish.  Connected  with  this  in  prac- 
tice, but  distinguishable  from  it,  is  another  variety  of  imagi- 
native exercise,  which  may  be  called  the  imagination  oi states 
of  feeling, )  Here  is  an  example : — 

"  A  fig  for  those  by  law  protected  ! 
Liberty's  a  glorious  feast ; 
Courts  for  cowards  were  erected ; 
Churches  built  to  please  the  priest." 

BuRNs's  Jolly  BeggarB. 

This  stanza,  it  will  be  observed — and  we  have  chosen  it 
on  purpose — is,  in  itself,  as  little  poetical  as  may  be ;  it  is 
mere  harsh  Chartist  prose.  But  in  so  far  as  it  is  an  imagined 
piece  of  concrete — that  is,  in  so  far  as  it  is  an  imagination  by 
the  poet  of  the  state  of  feeling  of  another  mind,  or  of  his  own 
mind  in  certain  circumstances — it  is  poetical.  This  is  an 
important  consideration,  for  it  links  the  poet  not  only  with 
what  is  poetical  in  itself,  but  with  a  whole,  much  bigger, 
world  of  what  is  unpoetical  in  itself.  The  poet  may  imagine 
opinions,  doctrines,  heresies,  cogitations,  debates,  expositions 
— there  is  no  limit  to  his  traffic  with  the  moral  any  more 
than  with  the  sensuous  appearances  of  the  universe ;  only,  as 
a  poet,  he  deals  with  all  these  as  concrete  things,  existing  in 
the  objective  air,  and  from  which  his  own  soul  stands 
royally  disentangled,  as  a  spade  stands  loose  from  the  sand 
it  digs,  whether  it  be  sand  of  gold  or  sand  of  silex.  The 
moment  any  of  the  doctrines  he  is  dealing  with  melts  subjec- 
tively into  his  own  personal  state  of  being  (which  is  neces- 
sarily and  nobly  happening  continually,)  at  that  moment  the 


428  THEORIES   OF   POETRY. 

poet  ceases  to  be  a  poet  pure,  and  becomes  so  far  a  thinker 
or  moralist  in  union  with  the  poet.  As  regards  the  literary 
range  of  this  kind  of  imaginative  exercise, — the  imagination 
of  states  of  feeling, — it  is  only  necessary  to  remember  what  a 
large  proportion  it  includes  of  our  lyric  poetry,  and  how  far 
it  extends  itself  into  the  epic  and  the  drama,  where  (and 
especially  in  the  drama)  it  forms,  together  with  the  imagi- 
nation of  costume,  the  greater  part  of  what  is  called  the 
invention  of  character. 

The  foregoing  is  but  a  slight  enumeration  of  some  of  the 
various  modes  of  imaginative  exercise  as  they  are  popularly 
distinguishable ;  and,  in  transferring  them  into  creative  litera- 
ture at  large,  they  must  be  conceived  as  incessantly  inter- 
blended,  and  as  existing  in  all  varieties  and  degrees  of 
association  with  personal  thought,  personal  purpose,  and 
personal  calm  or  storm  of  feeling.  It  is  matter  of  common 
observation,  however,  that  some  writers  excel  more  in  one 
and  some  more  in  another  of  the  kinds  of  imagination 
enumerated.  One  writer  is  said  to  excel  in  descriptions, 
but  to  be  deficient  in  plot  and  incident ;  nay,  to  excel  in  that 
kind  of  description  which  consists  in  the  imagination  of  form, 
but  to  be  deficient  in  that  which  consists  in  the  imagination 
of  colour.  Another  is  said  to  excel  in  plot,  but  to  be  poor 
in  the  invention  of  character,  and  in  other  particulars.  In 
short,  the  imagination,  though  in  one  sense  it  acts  loose  and 
apart  from  the  personality,  flying  freely  round  and  round 
it,  like  a  sea-bird  round  a  rock,  seems,  in  a  deeper  sense, 
restricted  by  the  same  law  as  the  personality  in  its  choice 
and  apprehension  of  the  concrete.  The  organ  of  ideality, 
as  the  phrenologist  would  say,  is  the  organ  by  which  man 
freely  bodies  forth  an  ideal  objective,  and  yet,  let  ideality 
bulge  out  in  a  man's  head  as  big  as  an  &gg^  it  is  of  no  use 
applying  it,  with  Keats  or  Milton,  in  the  direction  of  white 
pinks,  pansies  freaked  with  jet,  sapphire  battlements,  and 
crimson-lipped  shells,  unless  there  is  a  little  knot  on  the 
eyebrow  over  the  organ  of  colour. 

The  poetical  tendency  of  the  human  mind  being  this  ten- 
dency to  the  ideal  concrete — to  the  imagination  of  scenes, 


THEORIES  OF   POETRY.  429 

incidents,  physiognomies,  states  of  feeling,  and  so  on ;  and  all 
men  Having  more  or  less  of  this  tendency,  catering  for  them 
in  the  ideal  concrete,  very  much  in  the  same  way,  and  to  the 
same  effect,  as  their  senses  cater  for  them  in  the  real  (so  that 
the  imagination  of  a  man  might  be  said  to  be  nothing  more 
than  the  ghosts  of  his  senses  wandering  in  an  unseen  world), 
it  follows  that  the  poet,  par  excellence,  is  simply  the  man 
whose  intellectual  activity  is  consumed  in  this  kind  of  exer- 
cise. All  men  have  imagination  ;  but  the  poet  is  '^  of  imagi- 
nation all  compact."  He  lives  and  moves  in  the  ideal 
concrete.  He  teems  with  imaginations  of  forms,  colours, 
incidents,  physiognomies,  feelings,  and  characters.  The 
ghosts  of  his  senses  are  as  busy  in  an  unseen  world  of  sky, 
and  cloud,  and  sea,  and  vegetation,  and  cities,  and  high- 
ways, and  thronged  markets  of  men,  and  mysterious  beings, 
belonging  even  to  the  horizon  of  that  existence,  as  his  real 
senses  are  with  all  the  nearer  world  of  nature  and  life.  But 
the  notable  peculiarity  lies  in  this,  that  every  thought  of  his 
in  the  interest  of  this  world  is  an  excursion  into  that.  In  this 
respect  the  theory  which  has  been  applied  to  the  exposition 
of  the  Grecian  mythology,  applies  equally  to  poetic  genius  in 
general.  The  essence  of  the  mythical  process,  it  is  said,  lay 
in  this,  that  the  early  children  of  the  earth  having  no 
abstract  language,  every  thought  of  theirs,  of  whatever  kind, 
and  about  whatever  matter,  was  necessarily  a  new  act  of 
imagination,  a  new  excursion  in  the  ideal  concrete.  If  they 
thought  of  the  wind,  they  did  not  think  of  a  fluid  rushing 
about,  but  of  a  deity  blowing  from  a  cave ;  if  they  thought 
of  virtue  rewarded,  they  saw  the  idea  in  the  shape  of  a 
visible  transaction,  in  some  lone  place,  between  beings 
human  and  divine.  And  so,  allowing  for  a  certain  obvious 
amount  of  difference,  with  the  poetical  mode  of  thought 
to  this  day.  Every  thought  of  the  poet,  about  whatever 
subject,  is  transacted  not  only  in  propositional  language, 
but  for  the  most  part  in  a  kind  of  phantasmagoric,  or  repre- 
sentative language  of  imaginary  scenes,  objects,  incidents, 
and  circumstances.  To  clothe  his  feelings  with  circum- 
stance;  to   weave   forth  whatever   arises  in   his   mind  into 


430  THEORIES  OF  POETRY. 

an  olDJectlve  tissue  of  imagery  and  incident  that  shall  sub- 
stantiate it  and  make  it  visible  ;  such  is  the  constant  aim  and 
art  of  the  poet.  Take  an  example.  The  idea  of  life  occurs 
to  the  poet  Keats,  and  how  does  he  express  it  ? 

"  Stop  and  consider  !     Life  is  but  a  day ; 
A  fragile  dew-drop  on  its  perilous  way 
From  a  tree's  summit ;  a  poor  Indian's  sleep, 
While  his  boat  hastens  to  the  monstrous  steep 
Of  Montmorenci.     Why  so  sad  a  moan  ? 
Life  is  the  rose's  hope  while  yet  unblown ; 
The  reading  of  an  ever-changing  tale ; 
The  light  uplifting  of  a  maiden's  veil ; 
A  pigeon  tumbling  in  clear  summer  air ; 
A  laughing  school-b6y,  without  grief  or  care, 
Riding  the  springy  branches  of  an  elm." 

This  Is  true  iroir\aiQ.  What  with  the  power  of  innate  analogy, 
what  with  the  occult  suasion  of  the  rhyme,  there  arose  first 
in  the  poet's  mind,  contemporaneous  with  the  idea  of  life,  nay, 
as  incorporate  with  that  idea,  the  imaginary  object  or  vision 
of  the  dew-drop  falling  through  foliage — that  imagined  cir- 
cumstance is,  therefore,  flung  forth  as  representative  of  the 
idea.  But  even  this  does  not  exhaust  the  creative  force  ;  the 
idea  bodies  itself  again  in  the  new  imaginary  circumstance  of 
the  Indian  in  his  boat ;  and  that,  too,  is  flung  forth.  Then 
there  is  a  rest ;  but  the  idea  still  buds,  still  seeks  to  express 
itself  in  new  circumstance,  and  five  other  translations  of  it 
follow.  And  these  seven  pictures,  these  seven  morsels  of 
imagined  concrete,  supposing  them  all  to  be  intellectually 
genuine,  are  as  truly  the  poet's  thoughts  about  life  as  any 
seven  scientific  definitions  would  be  the  thoughts  of  the 
physiologist  or  the  metaphysician.  And  so  in  other  in- 
stances. Tennyson's  Vision  of  Sin  is  a  continued  phantas- 
magory  of  scene  and  incident  representative  of  a  meaning ; 
and  if  the  meaning  is  not  plain  throughout,  it  is  because  it 
v/r  would  be  impossible  for  the  poet  himself  to  translate  every 
(  portion  of  it  out  of  that  language  of  phantasmagory  in  which 
alone  it  came  into  existence.  Again,  Spenser's  personifi- 
cations— his  grim-hued  Horror  soaring  on  iron  wings,  his 
Jealousy  sitting  alone  biting  his  lips,  and  the  like — are  all 
thoughts  expressed  in  circumstance,  the  circumstance  in  this 
case  being  that  of  costume  and  physiognomy.     So,  too,  with 


THEORIES  OF  POETRY.  431 

such  splendid  personifications  as  those  of  De  Quincey — the 
eldest  and  the  youngest  of  the  Ladies  of  Sorrow ;  the  one, 
the  Lady  of  Tears,  with  eyes  sweet  and  subtle,  wild  and 
sleepy  by  turns,  a  diadem  on  her  head,  and  keys  at  her 
girdle ;  the  other,  the  Lady  of  Darkness,  her  head  turreted 
like  Cybele,  rising  almost  beyond  the  reach  of  sight,  the 
blazing  misery  of  her  eyes  concealed  by  a  treble  veil  of 
crape.  In  short,  every  thought  of  the  poet  is  an  imagination 
of  concrete  circumstance  of  some  kind  or  other — circumstance 
of  visual  scenery,  of  incident,  of  physiognomy,  of  feeling,  or 
of  character.  The  poet's  thought,  let  the  subject  be  what  it 
may,  brings  him  to 

"  Visions  of  all  places  :  a  bowery  nook 
Will  be  elysium — an  eternal  book 
Whence  he  may  copy  many  a  lovely  saying 
About  the  leaves  and  flowers — about  the  playing 
Of  nymphs  in  woods  and  fountains,  and  the  shade 
Keeping  a  silence  round  a  sleeping  maid  ; 
And  many  a  verse  from  so  strange  influence, 
That  we  must  ever  wonder  how  and  whence 
It  came ; " 

this  occultness  arising  from  the  inscrutability  of  the  law 
which  connects  one  concrete  phantasy  of  the  dreaming  mind 
with  another.  Kegarding  the  poet,  then,  considered  in  his 
nature,  we  may  sum  up  by  saying,  that  the  act  of  cogitation 
with  him  is  nothing  else  than  the  intellectual  secretion  of 
.fictitious  circumstance — the  nature  of  the  circumstance  in  each 
case  depending  on  the  operation  of  those  mysterious  afiinities 
which  relate  thought  to  the  world  of  sense.  In  regarding  the 
poet  more  expressly  as  a  literary  artist,  all  that  we  have  to  do 
is  to  vary  the  phrase,  and  say— the  intellectual  invention  of 
fictitious  circumstance.  This  will  apply  to  all  that  is  truly 
poetical  in  literature,  whether  on  the  large  scale  or  on  the 
small.  In  every  case  what  is  poetical  in  literature  consists  of 
the  embodiment  of  some  notion  or  feeling,  or  some  aggregate  of 
notions  and  feelings,  in  appropriate  imagined  circumstances. 
Thus,  in  historical  or  biographical  writing,  the  poetic  faculty 
is  shown  by  the  skill,  sometimes  conscious  and  sometimes 
unconscious,  with  which  the  figures  are  not  only  portrayed  in 
themselves,  but   set   against  imagined  visible  back-grounds, 


432  THEORIES  OF  POETRr. 

and  made  to  move  amid  circumstances  having  a  pre-arranged 
harmony  with  what  they  do.  The  achievement  of  this,  in 
consistency  with  the  truth  of  record,  is  the  highest  triumph  of 
the  descriptive  historian.  In  fictitious  prose-narrative  the 
same  poetic  art  has  still  freer  scope.  That  a  lover  should  be 
leaning  over  a  stile  at  one  moment,  and  sitting  under  a  tree  at 
another ;  that  it  should  be  clear,  pure  moonlight  when  Henry 
is  happy,  and  that  the  moon  should  be  bowling  through 
clouds,  and  a  dog  be  heard  howling  at  a  farmhouse  near, 
when  the  same  Henry  means  to  commit  suicide — are  artifices 
of  which  every  ordinary  novelist  is  master  who  knows  his 
trade.  The  giant  Grangousier,  in  Rabelais,  sitting  by  the 
fire,  very  intent  upon  the  broiling  of  some  chesnuts,  drawing 
scratches  on  the  hearth  with  the  end  of  a  burnt  stick,  and 
telling  to  his  wife  and  children  pleasant  stories  of  the  days  of 
old,  is  an  instance  of  a  higher  kind,  paralleled  by  many  in 
Scott  and  Cervantes.  And,  then,  in  the  epic  and  the  drama ! 
Hamlet  with  the  skull  in  his  hand,  and  Homer's  heroes 
^ij-ing  by  the  ttoXv^Xolg^olo  !  It  is  the  same  throughout 
the  whole  literature  of  fiction — always  thought  expressed  and 
thrown  oiF  in  the  language  of  representative  circumstance. 
Indeed,  Goethg's  theory  o£-]ioeticaLor  creative  literature  was, 
that  it  is  nothing  else  Jhan_the  moods  of  its  practitioners 
object! vized  as  t^ey  rise.  A  man  feels  himself  oppressed  and 
agitated  byteelings  and  longings,  now  of  one  kind,  now  of 
another,  that  have  gathered  upon  him  till  they  have  assumed 
the  form  of  a  definite  moral  uneasiness ;  if  he  is  not  a  literary 
man,  he  must  contrive  to  work  off*  the  load,  in  some  way  or 
other,  by  the  ordinary  activity  of  life — which,  indeed,  is  the 
great  preventive  established  by  nature;  if  he  is  a  literary 
man,  then  the  uneasiness  is  but  the  motive  to  creation,  and 
the  result  is — a  song,  a  drama,  an  epic,  or  a  novel.  Scheming 
out  some  plan  or  story,  which  is  in  itself  a  sort  of  allegory  of 
his  mood  as  a  whole,  he  fills  up  the  sketch  with  minor 
incidents,  scenes,  and  characters,  which  are  nothing  more,  as 
it  were,  than  the  breaking  up  of  the  mood  into  its  minutiae, 
and  the  elaboration  of  these  minutiae,  one  by  one,  into  the 
concrete.    This  done,  the  mood  has  passed  into  the  objective ; 


THEOEIES   OF   PQETEY.  433 

It  may  be  looked  at  as  something  external  to  the  mind,  which 
is  therefore  from  that  moment  rid  of  it,  and  ready  for  another. 
Such,  at  least,  was  Goethe's  theory,  which,  he  said,  would 
apply  most  rigidly  to  all  that  he  had  himself  written.  Nor 
would  it  be  difficult,  with  due  explanation,  to  apply  the 
theory  to  the  works  of  all  the  other  masters  of  creative  or 
poetical  literature  —  Homer,  Dante,  Cervantes,  Scott,  and 
Shakespeare.  Dante  may  be  said  to  have  slowly  translated 
his  whole  life  into  one  representative  performance. 

Several  suppTefiientarynconsiderations  must  be  now  adduced. 
The  form  of  the  poet's  cogitation,  we  have  said,  is  the  evolu- 
tion not  of  abstract  propositions  but  of  representative  concrete 
circumstances.  But  in  this,  too,  there  may  be  degrees  of 
better  and  worse,  of  greater  and  less.  Precisely  as,  of  two 
writers  thinking  in  the  language  of  abstract  speculation,  we 
can  say,  without  hesitation,  which  has  the  more  powerful 
mind;  so  of  two  writers  thinking  in  the  other  language 
of  concrete  circumstance,  one  may  be  evidently  superior 
to  the  other.  There  is  room,  in  short,  for  all  varieties  of 
greater  and  less  among  poets  as  among  other  people;  there 
may  be  poets  who  are  giants,  and  there  may  be  poets 
who  are  pigmies.  Hence  the  folly  of  the  attempts  to  exalt 
the  poetical  genius,  merely  as  such,  above  other  kinds  of 
intellectual  manifestation.  A  man  may  be  constitutionally 
formed  so  that  he  thinks  his  thoughts  in  the  language  of 
concrete  circumstance;  and  still  his  thoughts  may  be  very 
little  thoughts,  hardly  worth  having  in  any  language.  Both 
poets  and  men  of  science  must  be  tried  among  their  peers. 
Whether  there  is  a  common  measure,  and  what  it  is ;  whether 
there  is  an  intrinsic  superiority  in  the  mode  of  cogitation  of 
the  poet  over  that  of  the  philosopher,  or  the  reverse;  and 
whether  and  how  far  we  may  then  institute  a  comparison  of 
absolute  greatness  between  Aristotle  and  Homer,  between 
Milton  and  Kant— are  questions  of  a  higher  calculus,  which 
most  men  may  leave  alone.  There  is  no  difficulty,  however, 
when  the  question  is  between  a  Kirke  White  and  a  Kant ; 
and  when  a  poor  poet,  ever  so  genuine  in  a  small  way, 
intrudes   himself  on   the  Exchange   of  the    general   world. 


434  THEORIES   OF   POETRY. 

telling  people  there  that  his  intellect  is  "  genius,"  and  that 
theirs  is  "  talent,"  he  evidently  runs  a  risk  of  being  very 
unceremoniously  treated. 

"  This  palace  standetli  in  the  air. 
By  necromancy  placed  there, 
That  it  no  tempest  needs  to  fear. 

Which  way  soe'er  it  blow  it : 
And  somewhat  southward  tow'rd  the  noon 
There  lies  a  way  up  to  the  moon, 
And  thence  the  fairy  can  as  soon 

Pass  to  the  Earth  below  it." 

This  is  very  sweety  and  nice,  and  poetical  (it  is  by  Drayton  ; 
not  a  small  poet,  but  a  considerable  one) ;  and  yet  there  needs 
be  no  great  hesitation  in  saying  that,  call  it  genius  or  what 
we  will,  there  was  less  commotion  of  the  elements  when  it 
was  produced  than  when  Newton  excogitated  his  theory  of 
the  Law  of  Gravitation. 

But,  to  pass  to  another  point.  The  imagination,  as  we 
have  already  said,  following  the  law  of  the  personality,  some 
imaginations  are  strong  where  others  are  weak,  and  weak 
where  others  are  strong.  In  other  words,  though  all  poets,  as 
such,  express  themselves  in  the  language  of  concrete  circum- 
stance, some  are  greater  adepts  in  one  kind  of  circumstance, 
others  in  another.  Some  are  great  in  the  circumstance  of 
form,  which  is  the  sculptor's  favourite  circumstance;  others 
can  produce  admirable  compositions  in  chiaroscuro ;  others, . 
again,  have  the  whole  rainbow  on  their  pallet.  And  so,  some 
express  themselves  better  in  incident,  others  better  in  phy- 
siognomy and  character.  All  this  is  recognised  in  daily 
criticism.  Now,  the  consequence  of  the  diversity  is,  that  it  is 
very  difficult  to  compare  poets  even  amongst  themselves.  It 
is  not  every  poet,  that,  like  Shakespeare,  exhibits  an  imagi- 
nation that  is  absolutely  or  all  but  absolutely  universal, 
using  with  equal  ease  the  language  of  form,  of  colour,  of 
character,  and  of  incident.  Shakespeare  himself,  if  we  may 
infer  anything  from  his  minor  poems,  and  from  the  careless- 
ness with  which  he  took  ready-made  plots  for  his  dramas 
from  any  quarter  (in  which,  however,  there  may  be  a  philo- 
sophy), was  not  so  great  a  master  of  incident  as  of  other  kinds 
of  circumstance,  and  could  hardly  have  rivalled  Homer,  or 


THEORIES  OF  POETRY.  435 

Scott,  purely  as  a  narrative  poet.  How,  tlien,  establish 
a  comparative  measure,  assigning  a  relative  value  to  eac 
kind  of  circumstance?  How  balance  what  Chaucer  has  and 
has  not,  against  what  Milton  has  and  has  not — Chaucer  so 
skilful  in  physiognomy,  against  Milton  who  has  so  little  of  it, 
but  who  has  so  much  else ;  or  how  estimate  the  chiaroscuro  of 
Byron  as  against  the  richly  coloured  vegetation  of  Keats? 
Here,  too,  a  scientific  rule  is  undiscoverable,  and  a  judgment 
is  only  possible  in  very  decided  cases,  or  by  the  peremptory 
verdict  of  private  taste. 

*'  Many  a  night  I  saw  the  Pleiads,  rising  thro'  the  mellow  shade, 
Glitter  like  a  swarm  of  fire-flies  tangled  in  a  silver  braid." 

Who  will  venture  to  institute  a  sure  comparison  of  merit 
between  this  exquisite  bit  of  colour  from  Tennyson,  and  the 
following  simple  narrative  lines  from  the  same  poet  ? — 

"  And  all  the  man  was  broken  with  remorse ; 
And  all  his  love  came  back  a  hundredfold ; 
And  for  three  hours  he  sobbed  o'er  William's  child, 
Thinking  of  William." 

There  Is  yet  a  third  thing  that  has  to  be  taken  into  considera- 
tion. Be  a  man  as  truly  a  poet  as  it  is  possible  to  be,  and  be 
the  kind  of  circumstance  in  which  his  imagination  excels  as 
accurately  known  as  possible,  it  is  not  always  that  he  can  do 
his  best.  The  poet,  like  other  men,  is  subject  to  inequalities 
of  mood  and  feeling.  Now  he  is  excited  and  perturbed, 
because  the  occasion  is  one  to  rouse  his  being  from  its 
depths ;  now  he  is  placid,  calm,  and,  as  one  might  say,  com- 
monplace. Hence  variations  in  the  interest  of  the  poetical 
efforts  of  one  and  the  same  poet.  As  he  cannot  choose  but 
think  poetically,  whether  roused  or  not,  even  the  leisurely 
babble  of  his  poorest  hours,  if  he  chooses  to  put  it  forth,  will 
be  sweet  and  poetical.  But  he  is  not  to  be  measured  by 
this,  any  more  than  the  philosopher  by  his  casual  trifles,  or 
the  orator  by  his  speeches  on  questions  that  are  insignificant. 
Nay,  more  than  this,  it  is  important  to  remark  that  it  is  only 
at  a  certain  pitch  of  feeling  that  some  men  become  poets. 
For,  though  the  essence  of  poetry  consists,  as  we  have  said, 
in  a  particular  mode  of  intelhctual  exercise,  yet  the  emotional 

F  F  2 


436  THEORIES   OP  POETRY. 

moment  at  wHcli  diiFerent  minds  adopt  this  mode  of  exercise 
may  not  be  the  same.  The  language  of  concrete  circumstance 
is  natural  to  all  men  when  they  are  very  highly  excited :  all 
joy,  all  sorrow,  all  rage,  expresses  itself  in  vivid  imaginations. 
The  question  then  not  unfrequently  ought  to  be,  At  what  level 
of  feeling  a  man  is  or  professes  to  be  a  poet  ?  On  this  may 
depend,  not  your  verdict  as  to  the  genuineness  of  his  poetry, 
but  your  disposition  to  spare  time  to  listen  to  it.  The  most 
assiduous  members  of  Parliament  do  not  feel  bound  to  be  in 
the  House  even  when  a  leader  is  speaking,  unless  it  is  on  a 
Cabinet  question  or  a  question  of  some  considerable  interest. 
Some  orators  know  this  and  reserve  themselves;  others, 
delighting  in  their  profession,  speak  on  every  question.  It  is 
the  same  with  poets,  and  with  the  same  result.  A  Keats, 
though  always  poetical,  may  often  be  poetical  with  so  small 
a  stimulus,  that  only  lovers  of  poetry  for  its  own  sake  feel 
themselves  sufficiently  interested.  Why  are  Milton's  minor 
poems,  exquisite  as  they  are,  not  cited  as  measures  of  the 
magnitude  of  his  genius  ?  Because  they  are  not  his  speeches 
on  Cabinet  questions.  Why  is  Spenser  the  favourite  poet  of 
poets,  rather  than  a  popular  favourite  like  Byron  ?  For  the 
same  reason  that  a  Court  is  crowded  during  a  trial  for  life  or 
death,  but  attended  only  by  barristers  during  the  trial  of  an 
intricate  civil  case.  The  subject  chosen  by  a  poetical  writer, 
we  have  already  said,  is  a  kind  of  allegory  of  the  whole  state 
of  his  mental  being  at  the  moment ;  but  some  writers  are  not 
moved  to  allegorize  so  easily  as  others,  and  it  is  a  question 
with  readers  what  states  of  being  they  care  most  to  see  allego- 
rized. This,  then,  is  to  be  taken  into  account^  in  comparing 
poet  with  poet.  Precisely  as  an  orator  is  remembered  by  his 
speeches  on  great  questions,  and  as  the  position  of  a  painter 
among  painters  is  determined  in  part  by  the  interest  of  his 
subjects,  so,  in  a  comparison  of  poets  together,  or  of  the  same 
poet  with  himself,  the  earnestness  of  the  occasion  always  goes 
for  something.  Shakespeare's  Venus  and  Adonis,  exquisite 
as  a  poetical  study,  does  not  bear  one  down  with  the  same 
human  interest  as  his  plays ;  and  there  is  a  mighty  gradation 
of  interest  in  advancing  from  leisurely  compositions  of  the 


THEORIES   OF   POETRY.  437 

sweet  sensuous  order,  such  as  Keats's  Endymion  and  Spenser's 
Faery  Queene,  to  the  stern  and  severe  splendour  of  a  Divina 
Commedta  or  a  Prometheus  Vincttis,  True,  on  the  one  hand, 
poets  choose  their  own  subjects,  so  that  these  themselves  are 
to  be  taken  into  the  estimate;  and,  on  the  other,  the  very 
practice  of  the  art  of  poetical  expression  on  any  subject,  like 
the  glow  of  the  orator  when  he  begins  to  speak,  leads  on  and 
on  to  unexpected  regions.  Yet,  after  all,  in  weighing  a  poem 
against  others,  so  as  to  pronounce  a  judgment  as  to  relative 
greatness,  this  consideration  of  the  emotional  level  at  which 
it  was  produced,  and  of  its  interest  in  connexion  with  the 
general  work  and  sentiment  of  the  world,  is  a  source  of  much 
perplexity. 

"  Sweet  bird,  that  shunn'st  the  noise  of  folly, 
Most  musical,  most  melancholy  ! 
Thee,  chantress,  oft  the  woods  among 
I  woo,  to  hear  thy  even-song ; 
And,  missing  thee,  I  walk  unseen 
On  the  dry,  smooth-shaven  green, 
To  behold  the  wandering  moon 
Riding  near  her  highest  noon, 
Like  one  that  hath  been  led  astray 
Through  the  heaven's  wide  pathless  way, 
And  oft,  as  if  her  head  she  bow'd. 
Stooping  through  a  fleecy  cloud. 
Oft,  on  a  plat  of  rising  ground, 
I  hear  the  far-off  curfew  sound, 
Over  some  wide  watered  shore. 
Swinging  slow  with  sullen  roar." 

How  decide  between  this  from  Milton's  Fenseroso,  and  this,  in 
so  different  a  key,  from  Shakespeare's  Lear  f — 

"  Blow,  winds,  and  crack  your  cheeks  !  rage  !  blow  ! 
You  cataracts  and  hvirricanoes,  spout 
Till  you  have  drenched  our  steeples,  drowned  the  cocks  ! 
You  sulphurous  and  thought-executing  fires, 
Vaunt-couriers  of  oak-cleaving  thunderbolts. 
Singe  my  white  head  !  and  thou  all-shaking  thunder, 
Strike  flat  the  thick  rotundity  o'  the  world." 

A  fourth  consideration,  which  intrudes  itself  into  the  ques- 
tion of  our  appreciation  of  actual  poetry,  and  which  is  not 
sufficiently  borne  in  mind,  is,  that  in  almost  every  poem  there 
is  much  present  besides  the  pure  poetry.  Poetry,  as  such,  is 
cogitation  in  the  language  of  concrete  circumstance.  Some 
poets  excel  constitutionally  in  one  kind  of  circumstance,  some 
in  another;  some  are  moved  to  this  mode  of  cogitation  on 


438  THEORIES   OF   POETRY. 

a  less,  otliers  on  a  greater  emotional  occasion ;  but,  over  and 
above  all  tbis,  it  is  to  be  noted  that  no  poet  always  and 
invariably  cogitates  in  the  poetical  manner.  Speculation, 
information,  mental  produce  and  mental  activity  of  all  kinds, 
may  be  exhibited  in  the  course  of  a  work  which  is  properly 
called  a  poem  on  account  of  its  general  character;  and,  as 
men  are  liable  to  be  impressed  by  greatness  in  every  form 
wherever  they  meet  it,  all  that  is  thus  precious  in  the  extra- 
poetical  contents  of  a  poem,  is  included  in  the  estimate  of  the 
greatness  of  the  poet.  One  example  will  suffice.  Shakespeare 
is  as  astonishing  for  the  exuberance  of  his  genius  in  abstract 
generalization,  and  for  the  depth  of  his  analytic  and  philo- 
sophic insight,  as  for  the  scope  and  minuteness  of  his  poetic 
imagination.  It  is  as  if  into  a  mind  poetical  in  /orm,  there 
had  been  poured  also  all  the  matter  that  existed  in  the  mind 
of  his  contemporary  Bacon.  In  Shakespeare's  plays  we  have 
thought,  history,  exposition,  and  philosophy,  all  within  the 
round  of  the  poet.  The  only  difference  between  him  and 
Bacon  sometimes  is,  that  Bacon  writes  an  essay  and  calls  it 
his  own,  and  that  Shakespeare  writes  a  similar  essay,  and 
puts  it  into  the  mouth  of  a  Ulysses  or  a  Polonius.  It  is  only 
this  fiction  of  a  speaker  and  an  audience,  together  with  the 
circumstance  of  the  verse,  that  retains  many  of  Shakespeare's 
noblest  passages  within  the  pale  of  strict  poetry. 

Hitherto,  it  will  be  observed,  we  have  made  no  formal  dis- 
tinction between  the  poet,  specifically  so  called,  and  the 
general  practitioners  of  creative  literature,  of  whatever  species. 
Our  examples,  indeed,  have  been  taken  in  the  main  from 
those  whom  the  world  recognises  as  poets ;  but,  as  far  as  our 
remarks  have  gone,  poetry  still  stands  synonymous  with  the 
whole  literature  of  imagination.  All  who  express  their 
meaning,  and  impress  it  upon  the  world,  by  the  literary 
representation  of  scenes,  incidents,  physiognomies,  and  cha- 
racters, whether  suggested  by  the  real  world  or  wholly 
imaginary,  are  poets.  All  who,  doing  this,  do  it  grandly, 
and  manifest  a  rich  and  powerful  nature,  are  great  poets. 
Those  who  excel  more  in  the  language  of  one  kind  of 
circumstance,   are   poets    more    especially   of   that  kind   of 


THEORIES   OF   POETRY.  439 

circumstance  —  poets  of  visual  scenery,  poets  of  incident 
and  narration,  poets  of  physiognomy,  or  poets  of  character 
and  sentiment,  as  the  case  may  be.  Those  who  are  poetical 
only  at  a  high  key,  and  in  the  contemplation  of  themes  of 
large  human  interest,  are  the  poets  who  take  the  deepest 
hold  on  the  memory  of  the  human  race.  Finally,  those  who, 
having  the  largest  amount  of  poetic  genius,  and  of  the  best 
kind,  associate  therewith  the  most  extensive  array  of  other 
intellectual  qualities,  are  the  men  who,  even  as  poets,  give 
their  poems  the  greatest  impetus  and  the  greatest  universal 
chance. 

Not  a  word  in  all  this,  however,  to  exclude  imaginative 
prose-writers.  So  far,  the  Homers,  the  Platos,  the  Sopho- 
cleses,  the  Aristophaneses,  the  Virgils,  the  Dantes,  the 
Boccaccios,  the  Chancers,  the  Cervanteses,  the  Spensers,  the 
Shakespeares,  the  Miltons,  the  Tassos,  the  Moliferes,  the 
Goethes,  the  Richters,  the  Scotts,  the  Defoes,  of  the  world 
are  all  huddled  together,  the  principal  figures  of  a  great 
crowd,  including  alike  poets  and  prose-writers.  These  indeed 
may,  in  accordance  with  considerations  already  suggested,  be 
distributed  into  groups,  and  that  either  by  reference  to  degree 
or  by  reference  to  kind.  But  no  considerations  have  yet  been 
adduced  that  would  separate  the  imaginative  prose- writers,  as 
such — the  Boccaccios,  the  Cervanteses,  the  Richters,  the  Scotts, 
the  Defoes,  and  the  De  Quinceys — from  the  imaginative  verse- 
writers,  as  such.  Now,  though  this  is  good  provisionally ; 
though  it  is  well  to  keep  together  for  a  while  in  the  same 
field  of  view  all  writers  of  imagination,  whether  bards  or 
prose-writers ;  and  though,  as  we  have  already  said,  there  is 
no  reason  why  imagination  in  prose  should  not  be  allowed  to 
do  all  it  can  do,  and  why  prose-writers  like  Richter  and 
De  Quincey  should  not  be  crowned  with  poetic  laurel ;  yet 
the  universal  instinct  of  men,  not  to  say  also  the  prejudice  of 
association  and  custom,  demands  that  the  poets,  as  a  sect  or 
brotherhood,  shall  be  more  accurately  defined.  How,  then, 
lead  out  the  poets,  in  the  supreme  sense,  from  the  general 
throng  where  they  yet  stand  waiting  ?  By  what  device  call 
the  poets  by  themselves  into  the  foreground,  and  leave  the 


440  THEORIES  OF  POETRY. 

prose-writers  behind  ?  By  a  union  of  two  devices !  Gro  in 
front  of  the  general  crowd,  you  two ;  you,  flag-bearer,  with 
your  richly-painted  flag,  and  you,  fluter,  with  your  silver 
flute !  Flap  the  flag,  and  let  them  see  it ;  sound  the  flute, 
and  let  them  hear  it !  Lo !  already  the  crowd  wavers ;  it 
sways  to  and  fro ;  some  figures  seem  to  be  pressing  forward 
from  the  midst,  and  at  last  one  silver -headed  old  Serjeant 
steps  out  in  front  of  all,  and  begins  to  march  to  the  sound  of 
the  flute.  Who  is  it  but  old  Homer?  He  is  blind,  and 
cannot  see  the  flag,  but  he  knows  it  is  there,  and  the  flute 
guides  him.  Others  and  others  follow  the  patriarch,  whom 
they  never  deserted  yet,  some  looking  to  the  flag,  and  others 
listening  to  the  flute,  but  all  marching  in  one  direction. 
Shakespeare  comes  with  the  rest,  stepping  lightly,  as  if  but 
half  in  earnest.  And  thus  at  last,  lured  by  the  flag  and  by 
the  flute,  all  the  poets  are  brought  out  into  the  foreground. 
The  flag  is  Imagery  ;  the  flute  is  Verse.  In  other  words,  poets 
proper  are  distinguished  from  the  general  crowd  of  imagi- 
native writers  by  a  peculiar  richness  of  language,  which  is 
called  imagery,  and  by  the  use,  along  with  that  language,  of 
a  measured  arrangement  of  words  known  as  verse. 

It  is,  as  Mr.  Dallas  observes,  a  moot  point  whether  Imagery 
or  Verse  is  to  be  regarded  as  the  more  essential  element  of 
poetry.  It  has  been  usual,  of  late,  to  give  the  palm  to 
imagery.  Thus,  it  was  a  remark  of  Lord  Jeffrey — and  the 
remark  has  almost  passed  into  a  proverb — that  a  want  of 
relish  for  such  rich  sensuous  poetry  as  that  of  Keats  would 
argue  a  want  of  true  poetical  taste.  The  same  would  probably 
be  said  of  Spenser.  Mr.  Dallas,  on  tlie  other  hand,  thinks 
Verse  more  essential  than  Imagery,  and  in  this  Leigh  Hunt 
would  probably  agree  with  him.  The  importance  attached  to 
a  sensuous  richness  of  language  as  part  of  poetry  is,  Mr. 
Dallas  thinks,  too  great  at  present;  and  in  opposition  to 
Lord  Jeffrey,  or  at  least  by  way  of  corrective  to  his  remark 
about  Keats,  he  proposes  that  a  power  of  appreciating  such 
severe  literary  beauty  as  that  of  Sophocles,  shall,  more  than 
anything  else,  be  reckoned  to  the  credit  of  a  man's  poetical 
taste.     We  think  Mr.  Dallas,  on  the  whole,  is  in  the  right ; 


THEORIES   OF   POETRY.  441 

and  this  will  appear  more  clearly  if  we  consider  briefly 
what  Imagery  and  Verse  respectively  are,  in  their  relation  to 
poetry. 

Imagery  in  poetry  is  essentially  this — secondary  concrete 
adduced  by  the  imagination  in  the  expression  of  prior  con- 
crete.    Thus,  in  the  simile, — 

"  The  superior  Fiend 
Was  moving  toward  the  shore,  his  ponderous  shield 
Behind  him  cast ;  the  broad  circumference 
Himg  on  his  shoulders  like  the  moon,  whose  orb 
Through  optic  glass  the  Tuscan  artist  views 
At  evening  from  the  top  of  Fesole." 

Here  the  primary  circumstance  in  the  imagination  of  the 
poet  is  Satan,  with  his  shield  hung  round  his  shoulders. 
While  imagining  this,  however,  the  poet,  moving  at  ease  in 
the  whole  world  of  concrete  things,  strikes  upon  a  totally 
distinct  visual  appearance,  that  of  the  moon  seen  through 
a  telescope;  and  his  imagination,  enamoured  with  the  like- 
ness, cannot  resist  imparting  the  new  picture  to  the  reader  as 
something  auxiliary  and  additional  to  the  first.  Again,  take 
the  metafhor : — 

"  Sky  lowered,  and,  muttering  thunder,  some  sad  drops 
Wept  at  completing  of  the  mortal  sin 
Original." 

Here  the  process  is  the  same  as  in  the  simile,  but  more 
unconscious  and  complete.  The  concrete  circumstance  first  in 
the  mind  (so  far  at  least  as  these  lines  are  concerned)  is  the 
sky  dropping  rain ;  in  the  imagination  of  this  circumstance, 
another  imagined  circumstance,  that  of  a  being  shedding 
tears,  intrudes  itself;  the  two  circumstances,  so  like  to  the 
mind  that  it  hardly  is  conscious  that  they  are  two,  are  com- 
bined by  a  kind  of  identifying  flash ;  and  the  rich  double 
concrete  is  presented  to  the  reader.  So  essentially  with  that 
highest  species  of  metaphor,  the  personification  or  vivification 
(of  which,  indeed,  the  metaphor  quoted  is  an  example),  the 
speciality  of  which  consists  in  this,  that  a  piece  of  concrete 
taken  from  the  inanimate  world  is  wedded  to  a  piece  of  con- 
crete taken  from  the  world  of  life.  The  two  worlds  lying 
as  it  were  side  by  side  in  the  human  imagination  as  the  two 
halves  of  all  being,  this  kind  of  metaphor  is  the  most  natural 


442  THEORIES   OF   POETRY. 

and  the  most  frequent  of  all ;  and  powerful  imaginations  are 
exceedingly  prone  to  it.  A  subvarietj,  to  which  some  writers 
are  much  addicted,  is  the  identification  of  brute  with  human 
circumstance,  as  witness  Dickens's  dogs  and  ponies. 

Almost  all  so-called  images  may  be  reduced  under  one  or 
other  of  the  foregoing  heads ;  and,  in  any  case,  all  imagery 
will  be  found  to  consist  in  the  use  of  concrete  to  help  out 
concrete — in  the  impinging  of  the  mind,  so  to  speak,  while 
dealing  with  one  concrete  circumstance  against  other  and 
other  concrete  circumstances.  Now,  as  the  very  essence  of 
the  poet  consists  in  the  incessant  imagination  of  concrete 
circumstance,  a  language  rich  in  imagery  is  in  itself  a  proof  of 
the  possession  of  poetical  faculty  in  a  high  degree.  Cceteris 
paribus,  that  is,  where  there  is  an  equal  amount  of  imagina- 
tion and  of  the  same  quality,  in  the  bodying  forth  of  the  main 
circumstance  of  a  poem  or  a  poetical  passage — ^whether  that  is 
a  circumstance  of  visible  scenery,  of  incident,  of  physiognomy, 
or  of  mental  state  —  the  more  of  subsidiary  circumstance 
e,volved  in  intellectual  connexion  with  the  main  one  the 
higher  the  evidence  of  poetical  power.  There  is  an  analogy, 
in  this  respect,  between  poetical  and  scientific  writers.  Some 
scientific  writers,  as,  for  example,  Locke,  attend  so  rigorously 
to  the  main  thought  they  are  pursuing  as  to  give  to  their  style 
a  kind  of  nakedness  and  iron  straightness ;  others,  as,  for 
example.  Bacon,  without  being  indifferent  to  the  main 
thought,  are  so  full  of  intellectual  matter  of  all  kinds  that 
they  enrich  every  sentence  with  a  detritus  of  smaller  proposi- 
tions related  to  the  one  immediately  on  hand.  So  with  poets. 
Some  poets — as  Keats,  Shakespeare,  and  Milton  in  much  of 
his  poetry — so  teem  with  accumulated  concrete  circumstance, 
or  generate  it  so  fast,  as  their  imagination  works,  that  every 
imagined  circumstance  as  it  is  put  forth  from  them  takes  with 
it  an  accompaniment  of  parasitic  fancies.  Others,  as  the  Greek 
dramatists  and  Dante,  sculpture  their  thoughts  roundly  and 
massively  in  severe  outline.  It  seems  probable  that  the  tendency 
to  excess  of  imagery  is  natural  to  the  Gothic  or  Eomantic  as 
distinct  from  the  Hellenic  or  Classical  imagination ;  but  it  is 
not  unlikely  that  the  fact  that  poetry  is  now  read  instead  of     ^ 


THEORIES   OF   POETRY.  443 

)emg  merely  heard,  as  it  once  was,  has  something  to  do  with 
it.  As  regards  the  question  when  imagery  is  excessive,  iohe7i 
the  richness  of  a  poet's  language  is  to  he  called  extravagance, 
no  general  principle  can  be  laid  down.  The  judgment  on 
this  point  in  each  case  must  depend  on  the  particular  state 
of  the  case.  A  useful  distinction,  under  this  head,  might 
possibly  be  drawn  between  the  liberty  of  the  poet  and  the 
duty  of  the  artist.  Keats' s  Endymion,  one  might  safely,  in 
reference  to  such  a  distinction,  pronounce  to  be  too  rich ;  for 
in  that  poem  there  is  no  proportion  between  the  imagery,  or 
accessory  concrete,  and  the  main  stem  of  the  imagined 
circumstance  from  which  the  poem  derives  its  name.  In  the 
Eve  of  St.  Agnes,  on  the  other  hand,  there  is  no  such  fault. 

Of  verse,  as  connected  with  poetry,  various  theories  have 
been  given.      Wordsworth,   whose   theory   is   always   more 
narrow   than  his  practice,  makes  the  rationale  of  verse  to 
consist  in  this,  that  it  provides  for  the  mind  a  succession  of 
minute  pleasurable  surprises  in  addition  to  the  mere  pleasure 
communicated  by  the  meaning.     Others  regard  the  use  of 
verse  as  consisting  in  its  power  to  secure  the  attention  of  the 
reader  or  hearer.     Others  regard  it  as  a  voluntary  homage  of 
the  mind  to  law  as  law,  repaid  by  the  usual  rewards  of  dis- 
interested obedience.    Mr.  Dallas  sets  these  and  other  theories 
aside,  and  puts  the  matter  on  its  right  basis.     Verse  is  an 
artificial  source  of  pleasure ;  it  is  an  incentive  to  attention,  or 
a  device  for  economizing  attention  ;  and  it  is  an  act  of  obedi- 
ence to  law  if  you  choose  so  to  regard  it.    All  these,  however, 
are  merely  statements  respecting  verse  as  something  already 
found  out  and  existing ;  not  one  of  them  is  a  theory  of  verse 
in  its  origin  and  nature.     Such  a  theory,  if  it  is  to  be  sought  \ 
for  at  all,  must  clearly  consist  in  the  assertion  of  this,  as  a    \ 
fundamental  fact  of  nature — that,  when  the  mind  of  man  is     / 
either  excited  to  a  certain  pitch,  or  engaged  in  a  certain  kind  of  / 
exercise,  its  transactions  adjust  themselves_,  in  a  more  express^ 
manner  than  usual,  to  time  as  meted  out  in  beats  or  intervals. 
Mr.  Dallas,  giving  to   the  statement  its  most  transcendental  ' 
form,  says  that  the  rationale  of  metre  is  to  be  deduced  from 
the  ^act  that  Time  being,  according  to  Kant,  but  a  leading 


444  THEORIES   OP   POETRY. 

form  of  sense,  must  fall  under  the  law  of  imagination,  the 
faculty  representative  of  sense.  Quite  independent  of  this 
philosophic  generalization,  which  it  would  at  least  require 
much  time  to  work  down  for  the  ordinary  market,  there  are 
many  facts,  some  of  which  Mr.  Dallas  very  acutely  points  out,>^ 
all  tending  to  indicate  the  existence  of  such  a  law  as  we  have 
referred  to.  The  swinging  of  a  student  to  and  fro  in  his  chair 
during  a  fit  of  cogitation,  the  oratorical  see-saw,  the  evident 
connexion  of  mental  states  with  the  breathings  and  the  pulse- 
beats,  the  power  of  the  tick-tick  of  a  clock  to  induce  reverie, 
and  of  the  clinkum-clankum  of  a  bell  to  make  the  fool  think 
words  to  it,  are  all  instances  of  the  existence  of  such  a  law. 
Nay,  the  beginnings  of  poetical  metre  itself  are  to  be  traced  in 
speech  far  on  this  side  of  what  is  accounted  poetry.  There  is 
a  visible  tendency  to  metre  in  every  articulate  expression  of 
strong  feeling ;  and  the  ancient  Greeks,  we  are  told,  used  to 
amuse  themselves  with  scanning  passages  in  the  speeches  of 
their  great  orators.  Without  trying  to  investigate  this  point 
farther,  however,  we  would  simply  refer  to  a  consideration 
connected  with  it,  which  seems  important  for  our  present 
purpose.  The  law,  as  stated  hypothetically,  is,  that  the  mind, 
either  when  excited  to  a  certain  pitch,  or  when  engaged  in 
a  particular  kind  of  exercise,  takes  on,  in  its  transactions, 
a  marked  concordance  with  time  as  measured  by  beats.  Now, 
whether  is  it  the  first  or  the  second  mental  condition  that 
necessitates  this  concordance?  Poetry  we  have  all  along 
defined  as  a  special  mode  of  intellectual  exercise,  possible 
under  all  degrees  of  emotional  excitement — the  exercise  of  the 
mind  imaginatively,  or  in  the  figuring  forth  of  concrete  cir- 
cumstance. Is  it,  then,  poetry,  as  such,  that  requires  metre, 
or  only  poetry  by  virtue  of  the  emotion  with  w^hich  it  is  in 
general  accompanied,  that  emotion  either  preceding  and 
stimulating  the  imaginative  action,  or  being  generated  by  it, 
as  heat  is  evolved  by  friction  ?  The  question  is  not  an  easy 
one.  On  the  whole,  liowever,  we  incline  to  the  belief  that, 
though  poetry  and  passion,  like  two  inseparable  friends  that 
have  taken  up  house  together,  have  metre  for  their  common 
servant,  it  is  on  passion,  and  not  on  poetry,  that  metre  holds 


THEORIES   OF   POETRY.  445 

by  original  tenure.  The  very  reasons  we  adduce  for  thinking  so 
will  show  that  the  question  is  not  a  mere  metaphysical  quibble. 
These  are — that  metre  is  found,  in  its  highest  and  most  decided 
form,  in  lyrical  poetry,  or  the  poetry  of  feeling,  narrative 
poetry  having  less,  and  dramatic  poetry  still  less  of  it ;  and 
that,  wherever,  in  the  course  of  a  poem,  there  is  an  unusual 
metrical  boom  and  vigour,  the  passage  so  characterized  will  be 
found  to  be  one  not  so  much  of  pure  concrete  richness,  as  of 
strong  accompanying  passion.  What,  then,  if  song,  instead  of 
being,  as  common  language  makes  it,  the  complete  and 
developed  form  of  poetry,  should  have  to  be  philosophically 
defined  as  the  complete  and  developed  form  of  oratory,  passing 
into  poetry  only  in  as  far  as  passion,  in  its  utterance,  always 
seizes  and  whirls  with  it  shreds  and  atoms  of  imagined  cir- 
cumstance? If  this  is  the  true  theory,  verse  belongs,  by 
historical  origin,  to  oratory,  and  lingers  with  poetry  only  as 
an  entailed  inheritance.  Prose,  then,  may^  as  we  have  said, 
make  inroads  upon  that  region  of  the  literature  of  the  concrete 
which  has  hitherto  been  under  the  dominion  of  verse.  But, 
on  the  other  hand,  verse,  whatever  it  may  have  been  in  its 
origin,  exists  now,  like  many  other  sovereignties,  by  right  of 
expediency,  constitutional  guarantee,  and  the  voluntary  sub- 
mission of  those  who  are  its  subjects.  And  here  it  is  that  the 
tlieories  of  Wordsworth  and  others  have  their  proper  place. 
They  are  theories  of  verse,  not  in  its  origin,  but  in  its  character 
as  an  existing  institution  in  the  literature  of  the  concrete. 
They  tell  us  what  we  can  now  do  intellectually  by  means  of 
verse,  which  we  could  not  do  if  her  royalty  were  abolished. 
They  point  to  the  fact,  that  in  literature,  as  in  other  departments 
of  activity,  law  and  order,  and  even  the  etiquette  of  exquisite 
artificial  ceremonial,  though  they  may  impose  intolerable 
burdens  on  the  disaffected  and  the  boorish,  are  but  conditions 
of  liberty  and  development  to  all  higher,  and  finer,  and  more 
cultured  natures.  In  short,  (and  this  is  the  important  fact,) 
metre,  rhyme,  and  the  like,  are  not  only  devices  for  the  sweet 
and  pleasurable  conveyance  of  the  poet's  meaning  after  it  is 
formed  ;  they  are  devices  assisting  beforehand  in  the  creation 
of  that    meaning — devices   so  spurring  and  delighting  the 


446  THEORIES  OF   POETRY. 

imagination,  while  they  chafe  and  restrain  it,  that  its  thoughts 
and  combinations  in  the  world  of  concrete  circumstance  are 
more  rich,  more  rare,  more  occult,  more  beautiful,  and  more 
incomprehensible,  than  they  would  otherwise  be.  Like  the 
effect  of  the  music  on  the  fountain  and  the  company  of 
Bacchanals  in  Tennyson's  strange  vision,  is  the  effect  of  verse 
on  poetical  thought. 

"  Then  methought  I  heard  a  mellow  sound, 
Gathering  up  from  all  the  lower  ground ; 
Narrowing  in  to  where  they  sat  assembled, 
Low,  voluptuous  music  winding  trembled, 
Wov'n  in  circles  :  they  that  heard  it  sigh'd. 
Panted  hand  in  hand  with  faces  pale, 
Swung  themselves,  and  in  low  tones  replied, 
Till  the  fountain  spouted,  showering  wide 
Sleet  of  diamond-drift  and  pearly  hail." 

But  here  we  must  stop  our  discussions  on  the  Theory  of 
Poetry.  For  much  that  we  have  left  undiscussed,  and  especi- 
ally for  a  philosophical  division  of  poetry  according  to  its 
kinds,  we  must  refer  to  Mr.  Dallas.  We  recommend  his  book 
highly  and  cordially.  There  is  perhaps  a  stronger  dash  of 
what  may  be  called  Okenism  in  his  style  of  speculation,  than 
some  readers  may  like;  as,  for  example,  in  his  systematic 
laying  out  of  everything  into  corresponding  threes  or  triads. 
Thus,  poetry  figures  throughout  his  treatise  as  a  compound 
result  of  three  laws — the  law  of  unconsciousness,  the  law  of 
harmony,  and  the  law  of  imagination;  which  laws  are  supreme 
respectively  in  three  kinds  of  poetry — lyrical  poetry,  epic 
poetry,  and  dramatic  poetry ;  which  three  kinds  of  poetry, 
again,  correspond  historically  with  Eastern,  primitive,  or 
divine  art,  Grecian,  antique,  or  classical  art,  and  Western, 
modern,  or  romantic  art;  which  historical  division,  again, 
corresponds  philosophically  with  such  trinities  as  these — I, 
he,  you  ;  time  future,  time  past,  time  present ;  immortality, 
God,  freedom ;  the  good,  the  true,  the  beautiful.  All  this, 
stated  thus'  abruptly  and  without  explanation,  may  seem  more 
hopeless  sort  of  matter  to  some  than  it  would  to  us ;  but  even 
they  will  find  in  the  book  much  that  will  please  them,  in  the 
shape  of  shrewd  observation,  and  lucid  and  deep  criticism, 
valuable  on  its  own  account,  and  very  different  from  what 
used  to  be  supplied  to  the  last  age  by  its  critics. 


PKOSE  AND  YERSE    DE  QUINCEI.* 

In  the  Preface  to  this  series  of  volumes  (which  is  intended 
to  be  a  more  perfect  accomplishment,  under  the  author's  own 
editorship,  of  a  scheme  of  literary  collection  already  executed 
very  creditably  by  an  American  publisher),  Mr.  De  Quincey 
ventures  on  something  rather  unusual — a  theoretical  classifi- 
cation of  his  own  writings  for  the  benefit  of  critics.  The 
following  is  the  passage  in  which  he  states  this  classification 
and  the  groimds  of  it : — 

"  Taking  as  the  basis  of  my  remarks  the  collective  American  edition,  I  will 
here  attempt  a  rude  general  classification  of  all  the  articles  which  compose  it. 
I  distribute  them  grossly  into  three  classes  ; — 

"  First,  into  that  class  which  proposes  primarily  to  amuse  the  reader ;  but 
which,  in  doing  so,  may  or  may  not  happen  occasionally  to  reach  a  higher 
station,  at  which  the  amusement  passes  into  an  impassioned  interest.  Some 
jmpers  are  merely  playful ;  but  others  have  a  mixed  character.  These  present 
Autobiographic  Sketches  illustrate  what  I  mean.  Generally,  they  pretend  to 
little  beyond  that  sort  of  amusement  which  attaches  to  any  real  story,  thought- 
fully and  faithfully  related,  moving  throixgh  a  succession  of  scenes  suflBciently 
varied,  that  are  not  suffered  to  remain  too  long  vipon  the  eye,  and  that  connect 
themselves  at  every  stage  with  intellectual  objects.  But,  even  here,  I  do  not 
scruple  to  claim  from  the  reader,  occasionally,  a  higher  consideration.  At 
times,  the  narrative  I'ises  into  a  far  higher  key.  .  .  . 

"  Into  the  second  class  I  throw  those  papers  which  address  themselves  purely 
to  the  understanding  as  an  insulated  faculty ;  or  do  so  primarily.  Let  me 
call  them  by  the  general  name  of  essays.  These,  as  in  other  cases  of  the  same 
kind,  must  have  their  value  measured  by  two  separate  questions.  A. — What 
is  the  problem,  and  of  what  rank  in  dignity  or  use,  which  the  essay  under- 
takes ?  And  next — that  yjoint  being  settled — B. — What  is  the  success  ob- 
tained ?  and  (as  a  separate  question)  What  is  the  executive  ability  displayed  in 
the  solution  of  the  problem  ?  This  latter  question  is  naturally  no  qviestion  for 
myself,  as  the  answer  would  involve  a  verdict  upon  my  own  merit.  But, 
generally,  there  will  be  quite  enough  in  the  answer  to  Question  A  for  esta- 
blishing the  value  of  any  essay  oh  its  soundest  basis.  Prudens  interrogatio  est 
dimidium  scientice.  Skilfully  to  frame  your  question,  is  half-way  towards 
insuring  the  true  answer.  Two  or  three  of  the  problems  treated  in  these 
essays  I  will  here  rehearse  [Mr.  De  Quincey  here  cites,  as  examples  of  the 

*  British  Quarterly  Review;  July,  lS5i.— Selections  Grave  and  Gay,  from 
Writings  published  and  unpublished.  By  Thomas  De  Quincey.  Vols.  I.  and 
II.;  containing  "Autobiographic  Sketches."     Edinburgh,  1S53-4. 


448 


PROSE   AND   VERSE:    DE   QUINCEY. 


kind  of  writings  wluch  lie  refers  to  the  second  class,  his  essays  on  the  following 
subjects  : — Essenism,  The  Ccesars,  and  Cicero.']  These  specimens  are  sufficient 
for  the  purpose  of  informing  the  reader  that  I  do  not  write  without  a 
thoughtful  consideration  of  my  subject ;  and,  also,  that  to  think  reasonably 
upon  any  question,  has  never  been  allowed  by  me  as  a  sufficient  ground  for 
writing  upon  it,  unless  I  believed  myself  able  to  ofter  some  considerable 
novelty.  Generally,  I  claim  (not  arrogantly,  but  with  firmness)  the  merit  of 
rectification  applied  to  absolute  errors,  or  to  injurious  limitations  of  the  truth. 
"  Finally,  as  a  third  class,  and,  in  virtue  of  their  aim,  as  a  far  higher  class 
of  compositions,  included  in  the  American  collection,  I  rank  The  Confessions 
of  an  Opiwn-Eater,  and  also  (but  more  emphatically)  the  Suspiria  de  Profundis. 
On  these,  as  modes  of  impassioned  prose,  ranging  under  no  precedents  that 
I  am  aware  of  in  any  literature,  it  is  much  more  difficult  to  speak  justly, 
whether  in  a  hostile  or  a  friendly  character.  As  yet  neither  of  these  two 
tvorks  has  ever  received  the  least  degree  of  that  correction  and  pruning  which 
both  require  so  extensively ;  and  of  the  Suspiria,  not  more  than  perhaps  one- 
third  has  yet  been  printed.  When  both  have  been  fully  revised,  I  shall  feel 
myself  entitled  to  ask  for  a  more  determinate  adjudication  on  their  claims  as 
works  of  art.  At  present  I  feel  authorized  to  make  haughtier  pretensions  in 
right  of  their  conception  than  I  shall  venture  to  do,  under  the  peril  of  being 
supposed  to  characterize  their  execution.  Two  remarks  only  I  shall  address  to 
the  equity  of  my  reader.  First,  1  desire  to  remind  him  of  the  perilous  diffi- 
culty besieging  aU  attempts  to  clothe  in  words  the  visionary  scenes  derived 
from  the  world  of  dreams,  where  a  single  false  note,  a  single  word  in  a  wrong 
key,  ruins  the  whole  music ;  and,  secondly,  I  desire  him  to  consider  the  utter 
sterility  of  universal  literature  in  this  one  department  of  impassioned  prose, 
which  certainly  argues  some  singular  difficulty  suggesting  a  singular  duty  of 
indulgence  in  criticising  any  attempt  that  even  imperfectly  succeeds.  The 
Bole  Confessions,  belonging  to  past  times,  that  have  at  all  succeeded  in 
engaging  the  attention  of  men,  are  those  of  St.  Austin  and  of  Rousseau.  The 
very  idea  of  breathing  a  record  of  human  passion,  not  into  the  ear  of  the 
random  crowd,  but  of  the  saintly  confessional,  argues  an  impassioned  theme. 
Impassioned,  therefore,  should  be  the  tenor  of  the  composition.  Now,  in 
St.  Augustine's  Confessions  is  found  one  most  impassioned  passage — viz.,  the 
lamentation  for  the  death  of  his  youthful  friend  in  the  fourth  book ;  one,  and 
no  more.  Farther,  there  is  nothing  In  Rousseau,  there  is  not  even  so  much. 
In  the  whole  work  there  is  nothing  grandly  afiecting  but  the  character  and 
the  inexplicable  misery  of  the  writer," 

No  one  acquainted  with  Mr.  De  Quincey's  writings,  will 
deny  the  soundness  and  the  completeness  of  this  classifica- 
tion ;  nor  do  we  think  thaLAXriticjDXQPOsin^  to  himself  so 

ambitious^a  task  as  a.ru 

^, 

genius  as  a  whole^^could 
aiid~pr^ceed_Jo_ex^miae 

WTJter  o'flnteresting  memoirs ;  secojidTgr^s  an  essayist  or 
diicidator  of  difficult  historical  and  othe?  prohlems ;  and, 
lastljplisranalmost  uniq^^'pfacHtioner  of  a^^ecjiliar  style  of 
imag^inatlve^prtigliiylmpassionedj  Such  an  examina- 

tion, conducted  ever  so  rigorously,  if  by  a  competent  person, 
would  confirm  the  impression  now  entertained  on  all  hands, 
that  among  the  most  remarkable  names  in  the  history  of 
English  literature  for  many  a  day,  must  be  ranked  that  of 


PROSE  AND  VERSE  :  DE  QUINCEY.  449 

Thomas  De  Quincey.  Our  purpose,  however,  is  by  no  means 
so  extensive.  We  do  not  mean  to  comment  on  Mr.  De 
Quincey  as  a  writer  of  memoirs  and  narratives,  nor  to  cull 
from  his  numerous  contributions  in  that  department — the 
present  two  volumes  included — any  of  the  delightful  reminis- 
cences with  which  they  abound.  We  do  not  mean,  either,  to 
follow  Mr.  De  Quincey  through  any  of  the  various  tracks  of 
speculation  into  which  his  pure  intellectual  activity  has  led 
him,  and  thus  to  exhibit  the  delicacy  and  subtlety  of  his 
thinking  faculty,  the  range  of  his  observation  and  knowledge, 
and  the  value  of  his  conclusions  on  obscure  and  vexed  ques- 
tions. In  this  department,  we  believe,  he  would  be  found 
fully  entitled  to  the  praise  which  he  has  claimed  for  himself — 
the  praise  of  having  been  practically  faithful  to  that  theory  of 
literature  which  maintains  that  no  man  is  entitled  to  write 
upon  a  subject  merely  by  having  something  reasonable  to 
say  about  it,  unless  that  something  is  also,  to  some  extent, 
novel.  It  is  with  Mr.  De  Quincey,  however,  in  the  last 
of  the  three  aspects  in  which  he  has  presented  himself  to 
notice  in  the  foregoing  passage  that  we  propose  exclusively  to 
concern  ourselves.  We  thank  Mr.  De  Quincey  for  having  so 
presented  himself.  Not  only,  in  so  doing,  has  he  indicated, 
with  all  due  modesty,  what  he  esteems  his  peculiar  and 
characteristic  place  in  English  literature,  and  the  scene  and 
nature  of  his  highest  triumphs  as  a  writer ;  he  has  also,  at 
the  same  time,  suggested  a  very  curious  subject  for  critical 
discussion.  As  it  is  a  subject  we  have  sometimes  thought  of, 
we  are  glad  to  have  so  fit  an  opportunity  for  saying  a  few 
words  upon  it. 

By  the  established  custom  of  all  languages,  there  is  an 
immense  interval  between  the  mental  state  accounted  proper 
in  prose  composition,  and  that  allowed,  and  even  required,  in 
verse.  A  man,  for  the  most  part,  would  be  ashamed  of  per- 
mitting himself  in  prose  the  same  freedom  of  intellectual 
whimsy,  the  same  arbitrariness  of  combination,  the  same  riot 
of  imagery,  the  same  care  for  the  exquisite  in  sound  and 
form,  perhaps  even  the  same  depth  and  fervour  of  feeling,  that 
he  would  exhibit  unabashed  in  verse.     There  is  an  idea,  as  it 

G  G 


450  PROSE  AND  verse:  de  quincey. 

were,  that  if  the  matter  lying  in  the  mind  waiting  for  expres- 
sion is  of  a  very  select  and  rare  kind,  or  if  the  mood  is 
peculiarly  fine  and  elevated,  a  writer  must  quit  the  platform 
of  prose,  and  ascend  into  the  region  of  metre.  To  use  a 
homely  figure,  the  feeling  is  that,  in  such  circumstances,  one 
must  not  remain  in  the  plainly -furnished  apartment  on  the 
ground-floor  where  ordinary  business  is  transacted,  but  must 
step  up-stairs  to  the  place  of  elegance  and  leisure.  Take,  for 
example,  the  following  passage  from  Comus : — 

"  Sabrina  fair, 

Listen  where  thou  art  sitting 
Under  the  glassy,  cool,  translucent  wave. 

In  twisted  braids  of  lilies  knitting 
The  loose  train  of  thy  amber-dropping  hair ; 
Listen  for  dear  honour's  sake, 
Goddess  of  the  silver  lake — 
Listen  and  save." 

What  we  say  is,  that  if  any  man,  having  preconceived 
exactly  the  tissue  of  meaning  involved  in  this  passage,  had 
tried  to  express  it  in  prose,  he  would  have  had  a  sense  of 
shame  in  doing  so,  and  would  have  run  the  risk  of  being 
regarded  as  a  coxcomb.  Only  in  verse  will  men  consent,  as 
a  general  rule,  to  receive  such  specimens  of  the  intellectually 
exquisite  ;  but  offer  them  never  so  tiny  a  thing  of  the  kind  in 
verse,  and  they  are  not  only  satisfied,  but  charmed.  Nor  is 
it  only  w4th  regard  to  the  peculiarly  exquisite,  or  the  pecu- 
liarly luscious  in  meaning,  that  this  is  true ;  it  is  true,  also, 
to  a  certain  extent,  of  the  peculiarly  sublime,  or  the  peculiarly 
magnificent.     Thus  Samson,  soliloquizing  on  his  blindness — 

"  The  vilest  here  excel  me  ; 
They  creep,  yet  see.     I,  dark,  in  light  exposed 
To  daily  fraud,  contempt,  abuse,  and  wrong  ; 
"Within  doors,  or  without,  still  as  a  fool 
In  power  of  others,  never  in  my  own. 
Scarce  half  I  seem  to  live,  dead  more  than  half, 
O  dark,  dark,  dark  ;  amid  the  blaze  of  noon 
Irrecoverably  dark,  total  eclipse, 
Without  all  hope  of  day  ! 
0,  first-created  beam,  and  thou  great  "Word, 
Let  there  be  light,  and  light  was  over  all ; 
Why  am  I  thus  bereaved  thy  prime  decree  ? 
The  sun  to  me  is  dark 
And  silent  as  the  moon. 
When  she  deserts  the  night. 
Hid  in  her  vacant  interlunar  cave." 


PKOSE  AND  VERSE  :  DE  QUINCEY.         451 

In  prose  something  equivalent  to  this  might  have  been 
permitted  by  reason  of  the  severe  impressiveness  of  the 
theme ;  but  to  render  the  entire  mass  of  thoughts  and  images 
acceptable  precisely  as  they  are,  without  retrenchment  or 
toning  down,  one  almost  requires  to  see  the  golden  cincture 
of  the  enclasping  verse.  Take  a  passage  where,  this  cincture 
having  been  purposely  removed  in  the  process  of  translation, 
the  sheer  meaning  may  be  seen  by  itself  in  a  tumbled 
prose-heap.  The  following  is  a  description  from  ^schylus, 
literally  translated : — 

"  So  Tydeus,  raving  and  greedy  for  the  fight,  wars  like  a  serpent  in  its 
hissings  beneath  the  noon-tide  heat,  and  he  s  nites  the  sage  seer,  son  of 
Oicleus,  with  a  taunt,  saying,  that  he  is  crouching  to  death  and  battle  out  of 
cowardice.  Shouting  out  such  words  as  these,  he  shakes  their  shadowy  crests, 
the  hairy  honours  of  his  helm,  while  beneath  his  buckler  bells  cast  in  brass 
are  shrilly  pealing  terror.  On  his  buckler,  too,  he  has  this  arrogant  device  — 
a  gleaming  sky  tricked  out  with  stars,  and  in  the  centre  a  brilliant  full  moon 
conspicuous,  most  august  of  the  heavenly  bodies,  the  eye  of  night.  Chafing 
thus  in  his  vaunting  harness,  he  wars  beside  the  bank  of  the  river,  enamoured 
of  conflict,  like  a  steed  champing  his  bit  with  rage,  that  rushes  forth  when  he 
hears  the  voice  of  the  trumpet." 

Knowing  that  this  is  translated  from  verse,  we  admire  it ; 
but  if  it  were  presented  to  us  as  an  original  effort  of  descrip- 
tion in  prose,  we  should,  though  still  admiring  it,  feel  that  it 
went  beyond  bounds.  What  we  should  feel  would  be,  not 
that  such  a  description  ought  not  to  be  given,  but  that  prose 
is  not  good  enough  and  leisurely  enough  to  have  the  honour 
of  containing  it.  And,  so  generally,  when  a  man  launches 
forth  in  a  grand  strain,  or  when  he  begins  to  pour  forth  intel- 
lectual matter  more  than  usually  rich  and  luscious,  our  disposi- 
tion is  to  interrupt  him  and  persuade  him  to  exchange  the 
style  of  prose  for  that  of  metre.  *'  Had  we  not  better  step  up 
stairs?"  is  virtually  what  we  say  on  such  occasions  ;  and  this 
not  ironically,  but  with  a  view  to  hear  out  what  has  to  be  said 
with  greater  pleasure.  In  short,  we  allow  all  ordinary  business 
of  a  literary  kind — plain  statement,  equable  narrative,  pro- 
found investigation,  strong  direct  appeal — to  be  transacted  in 
prose  ;  we  even  permit  a  moderate  amount  of  beauty,  of  enthu- 
siasm, and  of  imaginative  play  to  intermingle  with  the  current 
of  prose-composition  ;  but  there  is  a  point,  marked  either  by 
the  unusual  fineness  of  the  matter  of   thought,  its  unusual 

G  g2 


452  PROSE  AND  verse:  de  quincey. 

arbitrariness  and  luxuriance,  its  unusual  grandeur,  or  its  un- 
usually impassioned  character,  at  which,  by  a  sort  of  law  of 
custom,  a  man  must  either  consent  to  be  silent,  or  must  lift 
himself  into  verse.  On  such  occasions  it  is  as  when  a  speaker 
is  expected  to  leave  his  ordinary  place  in  the  body  of  the 
house  and  mount  the  tribune. 

There  is  an  element  in  the  philosophy  of  this  matter  which 
it  may  be  well  to  attend  to  before  going  farther.  We  have 
spoken  as  if  the  meaning  to  be  uttered  were  generally  already 
in  the  mind,  before  the  form  of  utterance  is  chosen.  We  have 
represented  the  case  as  if  there  were  already  internally  pre- 
pared by  a  writer  a  certain  tissue  and  series  of  thoughts  and 
images,  and  as  if  it  were  then  capable  of  being  made  a  delibe- 
rate question  whether  he  should  emit  the  intellectual  whole 
thus  prepared  in  metre  or  in  prose.  But  this  is  not  the  actual 
state  of  the  fact.  The  actual  fact  is,  that  the  meaning  that 
will  in  any  case  exist  to  be  expressed  is  conditioned  beforehand 
\  by  the  form  of  expression  selected — in  other  words,  that  the 
;  matter  cogitated  does  not  precede  the  form  of  expression  and 
I  engage  this  or  that  form  of  expression  at  its  option,  but  that 
1  the  form  of  expression  assists  from  the  outset  in  determining 
I  the  kind  of  matter  that  shall  be  cogitated.  This  removes  a 
;'  practical  difficulty.  A  man  who  writes  in  prose  is,  by  the  fact 
that  he  does  so,  kept  within  the  bounds  of  prose  in  the  cha- 
racter of  his  mental  combinations.  Those  peculiar  finenesses 
and  flights  of  intellectual  activity  which  are  native  to  verse, 
are  then  simply  not  developed.  His  thoughts  stop  short  pre- 
cisely at  that  point  of  richness,  quaintness,  or  luxuriance  where 
prose  ceases  to  be  prose.  That  this  point  will  vary  according 
to  a  writer's  taste  and  faculty  does  not  for  the  present  matter. 
Qn  the  other  hand,  the  writer  who  uses  metre  and  jrhyni^ does 
not  prosecute  his  train  of  meaning  independently  of  them, 
but  partly  by  their  very  aid  in  leading  him  this  way  or  that. 
A  man  who  has  made  up  his  mind  to  add  to  all  the  other  con- 
ditions of  his  thinking,  these  two — first,  that  he  shall  think  in 
(synchronism  with  certain  metrical  beats  ;  and  secondly,  that 
he  shall  think  forward,  as  it  were,  to  that  point  in  his  mental 
horizon  where  he  sees  the  glimmer  of  a  certain  predetermined 


PROSE   AND   VEKSE  :    DE   QUINCEY.  453 

r^hyme — necessarily  accustoms  himself  to  a  more  complex  law 
fof  cogitation  than  rules  the  prose- writer,  and  moves  through 
^an  atmosphere  of  more  arbitrary  and  exquisite  and  occult  siig^ 
.gestions.  This  may  look  mechanical,  but  it  is  the  very  ration^ 
\ale  of  verse  and  its  functions.  Versifiers  are  men  who  have 
voluntarily,  in  accordance  with  some  original  bent  in  their 
nature,  submitted  their  thoughts  to  a  more  complex  mechanism 
than^ordinary  prose- writers ;  and  whose  reward  is,  that,  when 
they  are  such  masters  of  the  mechanism  as  no  longer  to  think 
of  its  existence,  they  can  revel  in  combinations  more  intimate, 
extreme,  and  exquisite  than  their  prose  thoughts  would  be.  _In 
reading  a  passage  of  verse,  therefore,  we  have  to  bear  in  mind 
th^t  the  meaning  came  in  part  to  be  what  it  is  because  the 
verse^assisted  to  create  it.  Thus,  in  the  passage  quoted  from 
Comus,  it  is  unnecessary  to  trouble  ourselves  with  fancying 
what  reception  such  a  dainty  little  picture  would  have  met 
with  if  offered  originally  in  prose  ;  for  it  is  what  it  is,  simply 
because  metre  and  rhyme  conspired  in  the  production  of  it. 
So,  also,  in  the  passage  from  Sainson  Agom'sfes,  the  mass  of 
thoughts  and  images  would  have  stood  somewhat  different 
from  the  first,  had  it  not  been  shaped  implicitly  to  fill  the  mould 
of  that  precise  metre.  Again,  in  the  description  from  jEschylus, 
whatever  passes  the  degree  of  imaginative  richness  deemed 
suitable  to  prose,  is  justified  by  the  recollection  that  these 
excesses  were  perpetrated  in  verse.  And  this  last  instance 
suggests  an  observation  of  some  importance.  It  may  happen 
— and  does  often  happen — that  the  metrical  form  may  have 
been  necessary  to  the  evolution  of  a  particular  piece  of  mean- 
ing, and  may  yet  not  be  so  necessary  to  the  preservation  and 
perpetuation  of  it,  after  it  has  been  produced.  Only  under  the 
condition  of  metre  may  a  thought  of  special  splendour  or 
beauty  have  been  actually  excogitated ;  and  yet,  once  it  is 
fairly  on  this  side  of  the  Styx,  the  metrical  mould  necessary 
for  its  safe  conveyance  hither  may  be  fractured,  and  the  thought 
will  still  stand  appreciable  on  its  own  merits.  And  thus  it  is 
that  much  of  the  greatness  of  the  highest  poetry  is  indestruc- 
tible by  even  the  rudest  process  of  transmutation  into  literal 
prose.     The  actual  matter  of  Homer's  Iliad  and  of  the  great 


454  PKOSE   AND  VEESE:    DE   QUINCEY. 

Greek  tragedies  miglit  never  have  existed  but  for  the  sugges- 
tive power  in  the  minds  of  the  poets  of  those  precise  hexa- 
meters and  iambic  and  choral  measures  in  which  it  was 
imagined  and  delivered  ;  but  much  of  what  is  noble  in  it 
survives  yet  in  the  baldest  prose  translation.  The  precious- 
ness  of  the  thought  is  to  be  recognised,  as  it  were,  even  after 
the  fabric  of  the  verse  has  been  crumbled  into  the  mere  form 
of  unmetrical  powder. 

All  this,  however,  does  not  affect  the  practical  importance 
of  the  consideration  that  custom  has  established  a  distinction 
between  w^hat  is  lawful  in  prose  and  what  is  lawful  in  verse. 
Tnie,  for  the  reasons  above  stated,  the  distinction  causes  no 
one  any  personal  inconvenience.     He  who  prefers  to  write  in 
prose  does  so  because  he  finds  he  can  make  prose  sufficient. 
The  necessity  for  writing  in  verse  only  exists  where  there  is 
the  prior  habit,  if  we  may  so  call  it,   of  thinking  in  verse. 
When  the  thoughts  of  a  prose- writer  reach  that  degree  of  ex- 
quisiteness,  or  lusciousness,  or  imaginative  grandeur,  where 
prose  refuses  to  contain  them,  nature  provides  the  remedy  by 
simply  whirling  the  man  into  verse.     He  has  the  option  of 
allowing  himself  to  be  so  whirled,  or  of  restraining  himself, 
and  refusing  to  go  on  whenever  the  said  point  is  reached.    He 
may  choose  never  "  to  go  up  stairs,"  never  to  put  himself  into 
such  a  strain  that  it  shall  be  necessary  for  him  to  ascend  the 
tribune  in  order  to  speak.     But  here  lies  the  great  question. 
\  Where  is  that  ideal  point  at  which  a  man  must  either  smother 
I  what  is  brewing  in  him,  or  ascend  the  tribune  and  speak  in 
Werse  ?     What  are  the  limits  and  capabilities  of  prose ;  and 
through  what  series  of  gradations  does  prose  pass  into  tech- 
nical and  completed  verse  ?     If  a  man  refuses  to  be  whirled 
past  the  extreme  prose  point,  what  amount  of  farther  intel- 
lectual possibility,  and  of  what  precise  kind,  does  he  thus 
forgo?     Is  the  ulterior  region  into  which  verse  admits  co- 
extensive with  that  which  it  leaves  behind  ;  and,  if  not,  what 
is  its  measure  ?     Does  it  overhang  the  realm  of  prose  like  a 
superior  ether,  nearer  the  empyrean,  or  does  it  only  softly  round 
it  to  a  small  measurable  distance  ?     Is  the  relation  of  prose 
to  verse  that  of  absolute  inferiority,  or  of  inferiority  in  some 


PROSE  AND  yerse:  de  quincey.  455 

respects  counterbalanced  by  superiority  in  others  ?  In  short, 
what  is  it  that  verse  can  do  that  prose  cannot,  and  what  is  the 
value  of  this  special  kind  of  intellectual  work  which  only  verse 
can  transact?  We  have  spoken  vaguely  of  the  boundary 
between  prose  and  verse  as  being  marked  by  a  certain  degree 
of  fineness,  or  exquisiteness,  or  occultness,  or  lusciousness,,  or 
arbitrariness,  or  grandeur,  or  passionateness  in  the  matter  of 
thought  to  be  expressed ;  we  must  now  seek  for  a  more  exact 
definition,  so  as  to  see  what  proportion  of  just  human  thought 
prose  at  its  utmost  will  contain,  and  what  residue  must  either 
be  forgone  or  allowed  to  exhibit  itself  in  verse. 

It  will  be  admitted,  at  least,  that  for  all  the  purposes  of 
what  is  called  investigation,  speculation,  generalization,  philo- 
sophical discussion  and  exposition,  prose  is  sufficient.  There  is 
no  need  for  a  man  "to  step  up  stairs  "  so  long  as  he  deals  with 
matter  pertaining  to  what  is  called  the  pure  understanding.  A 
Kant,  a  Leibnitz,  or  a  Sir  William  Hamilton,  so  far  as  their 
pure  reasonings  are  concerned,  need  never  find  themselves 
whirled  past  the  prose  point,  notwithstanding  that  the  matters 
about  which  their  reasoning  is  employed  may  be  the  generali- 
ties on  which  the  universe  rests,  and  that  their  conclusions  in 
such  matters  may  be  the  result  of  vast  force  of  intellect,  and 
may  set  the  whole  world  in  amaze.  The  actual  reasonings  of 
even  a  half-inspired  Plato  may  be  delivered  to  their  last  link 
without  the  aid  of  verse.  This,  then,  is  much  to  say  in  behalf 
of  poor  prose.  It  ought  to  silence  the  absurd  chatter  of  many 
a  versifier  exulting  in  his  technick  without  any  just  knowledge 
of  what  it  really  is.  The  large  world-shaking  abstraction,  the 
profound  all-penetrating  stroke  of  intellect,  the  rich  shower  of 
fructifying  propositions,  the  iron  chain  of  conquering  syllogisms 
— all  these  are  possible  to  the  prose- writer  in  a  manner  and  to 
an  extent  beyond  the  legitimate  or  usual  powers  of  verse.  The 
verse  of  a  Shakespeare,  it  is  true,  will  teem  with  matter  se- 
creted by  the  purely  intellectual  organ,  the  same  being  so  in- 
terfused with  the  poetic,  that  the  superfetation  does  not  seem 
a  fault ;  and  a  Wordsworth  may,  in  beautiful  metre,  reproduce 
the  philosophizings  of  a  Spinoza.  But  even  these  masters  of 
verse  could  do  nothing  in  this  department  by  the  help  of  their 


456  PROSE   AND   VEKSE  :    DE   QUINCEY. 

iambics  wliicli  equal  power  could  not  have  done  more  rigor- 
ously and  systematically  with  the  iambics  away.  In  passing 
into  verse,  the  poet  may  take  such  matter  with  him,  but  he 
must  treat  it  in  such  a  manner  that,  from  the  point  of  view  of 
the  pure  thinker,  there  is  a  loss  of  the  logical  virtue.  This  is 
a  point  which  might  be  discussed  at  length  ;  suffice  it  to  say 
that,  with  all  the  reverence  that  exists  for  poetry  as  distinct 
from  prose,  no  one  will  deny  that  at  the  present  moment  there 
lies  imbedded  in  the  prose-treatises  of  the  world,  a  mass  of 
most  precious  substance  distinct  from  all  that  can  be  found  in 
verse. 

i  Again,  prose  is  sufficient  for  the  expression  of  at  least 
ja  large  proportion  of  all  possible  human  emotion.  It  would 
ibe  difficult  to  say  at  what  pitch  of  mere  feeling  it  would  be 
absolutely  necessary  to  go  "  up  stairs "  for  the  sake  of 
adequately  expressing  it.  Joy,  sorrow,  indignation,  rage, 
love,  hatred — there  is  ample  scope  for  the  expression  of  these 
passions  within  the  limits  of  prose.  Impassioned  prose 
oratory  can  exhibit  as  splendid  renderings  of  some  of  these 
passions,  as  any  that  can  be  found  in  poetry.  Indeed  there  are 
some  passions — as,  for  example,  those  of  laughter  and  indigna- 
tion— which  find  a  more  natural  utterance  in  prose.  And  yet 
it  is  precisely  in  this  matter  of  the  expression  of  feeling  or 
passion,  that  we  first  come  in  sight  of  the  natural  origin  of 
metre.  At  a  certain  pitch  of  fervour  or  feeling,  the  voice 
does  instinctively  lift  itself  into  song.  Intense  grief  breaks 
into  a  wail,  great  joy  bursts  into  a  measured  shout,  pride 
moves  to  a  slow  march ;  all  extreme  passion  tends  to  cadence. 
"  And  the  king  was  much  moved,  and  went  up  to  the  chamber 
over  the  gate  and  wept ;  and,  as  he  went,  thus  he  said,  Oh, 
my  son,  Absalom,  my  son,  my  son  Absalom !  Would  God  I 
had  died  for  thee ;  Oh,  Absalom,  my  son,  my  son  ! "  Wher- 
ever there  is  emotion  like  this,  we  have  a  rudimentary  metre 
in  its  expression  ;  and  verse  in  all  its  forms  is  nothing  else 
than  the  prolongation  and  extended  ingenious  application  of 
this  hint  of  nature.  It  may  be  laid  down  as  a  principle, 
therefore^  that  impassioned  writing  tends  to  the  metrical ;  and 
that^_therefore,  though  this  tendency  may  gratify  itself  to 


PROSE  AND  verse:  de  quincey.  457 

a  great  length,  almost  to  an  indefinite  length,  within  the 
limits  of  such  wild  metrical  prose  as  it  will  itself  create  for 
the  passing  occasion,  yet  at  a  certain  point  in  all  feelings,  and 
more  particularly  in  such  feelings  as  joy,  sorrow,  and  love,  it 
will  overleap  the  boundary  of  what  in  any  sense  can  be  called 
prose,  and  seize,  by  a  kind  of  necessity,  on  that  artifice  of 
verse  ^  which  past  custom  has  provided  and  consecrated. 
Walking  by  the  river-side,  full  of  thought  and  sadness,  even 
the  homely  rustic  minstrel  will  find  it  natural  to  pour  forth 
his  feelings  to  the  established  cadence  of  some  well-known 
melody — 

"  But  minstrel  Burn  cannot  assuage 

His  woes  while  time  endureth, 
To  see  the  changes  of  this  age, 

Which  fleeting  Time  procureth  : 
Full  many  a  place  stands  in  hard  case, 

Where  joy  was  wont  beforrow. 
With  Humes  that  dwelt  on  Leader  braes, 

And  Scotts  that  dwelt  on  Yarrow  ;" 

the  very  tune  of  the  thought,  as  it  were,  keeping  time  with 

the  arm,  as  it  moves  with  the  bow  of  an  imaginary  violin. 

And  so  with  more  modern  and  more  cultured  poets.     Thus 

Tennyson  : — 

"  Break,  break,  break, 

On  thy  cold  grey  stones,  0  sea  ! 
And  I  would  that  my  tongue  could  utter 
The  thoughts  that  arise  in  me  ! 

0,  well  for  the  fisherman's  boy, 

That  he  shouts  with  his  sister  at  play  ; 

O,  well  for  the  sailor-lad, 

That  he  sings  in  his  boat  on  the  bay. 

And  the  stately  ships  go  on 

To  their  haven  under  the  hill ; 
But  O  for  the  touch  of  a  vanished  hand, 

And  the  sound  of  a  voice  that  is  still ! 

Break,  break,  break, 

At  the  foot  of  thy  crags,  0  sea  ! 
But  the  tender  grace  of  a  day  that  is  dead 

Will  never  come  back  to  me." 

This  is  not  a  case  in  which  the  same  feeling,  to  the  same 
intensity  of  pitch,  could  have  been  expressed  in  any  form  of 
metrical  prose,  and  in  which,  therefore,  the  verse, is  only 
adopted  to  increase  the  beauty  of  the  form  ;  it  is,  we  verily 
believe,  a  case  in  which  the  feeling  had  to  overleap  the  bounds 


458  PllOSE  AND  veese:  de  quincey. 

of  possible  prose,  in  search  of  a  means  of  appropriate  expres- 
sion, on  pain  of  being  repressed  or  mutilated  if  these  means 
were  not  found. 

There  remains  now  only  the  field  of  representative  litera- 
ture, the  literature  of  the  concrete.  How  far  does  prose  stretch 
over  this  field ;  and  what  portion  of  it,  if  any,  is  the  exclusive 
possession  of  verse?  The  field  divides  itself,  theoretically 
speaking,  into  two  halves  or  sections — the  domain  of  mere 
history  and  description,  in  which  the  business  of  the  writer  is 
with  the  actual  concrete,  the  actual  scenes  and  events  of  the 
world ;  and  the  high  domain  of  imagination  or  fiction,  in  which 
the  business  of  the  writer  is  with  concrete  furnished  forth  by 
his  own  creative  phantasy. 

Is  prose  sufficient  for  all  the  purposes  of  historical  or 
descriptive  writing,  viewed  as  separately  as  may  be  from 
that  department  of  imaginative  writing  into  which  it  shades 
off  so  gradually  ?  We  should  say  that  it  is.  We  should  say 
that  for  all  the  purposes  of  exact  record,  of  exact  reproduction 
of  fact  in  all  its  vast  variety  of  kinds — fact  of  scenery,  fact  of 
biography,  fact  of  history,  fact  even  of  transacted  passion — 
prose  is  sufficient,  and  verse  unnecessary,  or  even  objection- 
able. For  the  true  and  accurate  retention  and  representation 
of  all  that  man  can  observe  (and  a  large  and  splendid  function 
this  is)  prose  is  superior  to  verse ;  and  when  this  function  is 
committed  to  verse,  there  is  an  inevitable  sacrifice  of  the  pure 
aim  of  the  function,  though  that  sacrifice  may  at  times  be 
attended  with  the  gain  of  something  supposed  to  be  better. 
That  this  statement  may  not  be  immediately  assented  to  will 
arise  from  a  confusion  of  the  descriptive  and  the  imaginative. 
Thomson^s  Seasons,  and  much  of  Wordsworth's  poetry,  are 
entitled  descriptive  compositions ;  but,  properly  considered, 
they  are  not  records,  but  the  imaginative  use  of  records. 
Again,  Homer  is  a  narrative  poet,  but  narration  with  him  is 
but  a  special  use  of  tlie  imaginative  faculty.  Isolate  strictly 
the  department  of  historical  or  descriptive  writing  proper 
from  that  into  which  it  so  readily  shades  off,  and  prose  is  the 
legitimate  king  of  it.  We  can  conceive  but  of  two  apparent 
exceptions — first,  where  verse  itself  is  one  of  the  facts  to  be 


PROSE  AND   VEESE;    DE   QUINCEY.  459 

recorded ;  and,  secondly,  where  tlie  historian  or  the  describer 
waxes  so  warm  in  the  act  of  description  that  he  approaches 
the  singing  point.  In  the  first  case,  verse  must  be  treated  as 
any  other  fact,  that  is,  represented  accurately,  that  is,  quoted 
— which,  however,  is  a  prose  feat ;  in  the  second  case,  it  is 
not  the  facts  that  the  historian  sings,  but  his  own  impas- 
sioned feeling  about  them — a  matter  abeady  provided  for 
under  another  head. 

And  now  for  the  real  tug  of  war.  What  are  the  relative 
capabilities  of  Prose  and  Verse  in  the  great  field  of  fictitious 
or  imaginative  literature  ?  It  is  needless  to  say  that  here  it 
is  that,  by  the  universal  impression  of  mankind.  Verse  is 
allowed  the  superior  rank  of  the  two  sisters.  The  very  lan- 
guage we  use  implies  this.  The  word  poetry  literally  means 
creation  or  fiction ;  and  is  thus  co-extensive  with  the  whole 
field  of  literature  under  notice.  And  yet  it  is  by  a  deviation 
from  the  common  usage  of  speech,  that  we  use  the  word 
poetry  in  this  its  wide  etymological  sense.  When  we  speak 
of  a  poet,  we  mean,  unless  we  indicate  otherwise,  a  man  who 
Avrites  in  verse ;  when  we  speak  of  English  poetry,  we  mean 
the  library  of  English  books  written  in  verse.  This  is 
significant.  It  indicates  the  belief  that  the  essential  act  of 
iroLrjCTi^  is  somehow  connected  with  the  metrical  tendency, 
and  best  transacts  itself  in  alliance  with  that  tendency.  In 
other  words,  it  implies  a  conviction,  founded  if  not  on  prin- 
ciple, at  least  on  experience,  that  when  the  mind  sets  itself  to 
work  in  that  peculiar  manner  which  we  designate  by  the  term 
imagination  or  imaginative  exercise,  the  assumption  of  the 
metrical  form  of  expression  is  natural,  and,  perhaps  in  some 
cases,  essential  to  it.  And  yet  this  is  contradicted  at  once, 
to  some  extent,  by  palpable  fact.  In  the  prose  literature 
of  all  languages,  there  is  a  vast  proportion  of  works  in 
which  the  prevailing  intention  of  the  authors  is  that  of 
strict  TTOLTjo-if;,  the  strict  invention  and  elaboration  of  an  im- 
aginary or  fictitious  concrete.  There  is  the  novel,  the  prose 
romance,  the  sentimental  tale,  the  whole  body  of  the  prose 
literature  of  imagination  in  its  thousand  forms.  Bohinson 
Crusoe^  Don  Quixote,  the   Waverley  Novels,  and  the  like,  are 


460  PROSE  AND  verse:  de  quincey. 

prose  efforts  of  a  kind  as  strictly  falling  under  the  head  of 
TToirjat^  or  creation,  in  its  widest  sense,  as  the  Prometheus 
VinctuSy  Paradise  Lost,  or  Tennyson's  Princess.  Accordingly, 
we  do  sometimes  rank  the  writers  of  imaginative  prose  among 
poets  or  "  makers."  The  question,  then,  arises  :  can  we,  by 
philosophical  investigation,  or  by  the  examination  of  actual 
instances,  determine  in  what  precise  conditions  it  is  that  the 
generic  act  of  iroi'rj(Ti<;,  or  imaginative  exercise,  disdains  the 
level  ground  of  prose,  and  even  its  highest  mountain-tops,  and 
rises  instinctively  and  necessarily  on  the  wings  of  verse  ? 

There  are  various  kinds  of  Troirjcn^,  or  imaginative  exercise, 
according  to  the  species  of  concrete  imagined.  There  is  the 
TTotT^o-fc?  of  mere  inanimate  objects  and  scenery,  as  in  much  of 
Thomson ;  there  is  the  TrotT^o-t?  of  physiognomy  and  costume, 
as  in  much  of  Scott  and  Chaucer;  there  is  the  Trocrjat^  of 
incident  and  action,  as  in  narrative  poetry;  there  is  the 
7rot77<7t9  of  feelings  and  states  of  mind,  as  in  songs ;  there  is, 
as  a  kind  of  extension  of  this  last,  the  irotrjaL^  of  character. 
From  the  masterly  exercise  of  these  different  kinds  of  iroirjai'^ 
in  different  forms  of  combination,  arise  the  great  kinds  of 
poetry — the  descriptive,  the  epic,  the  dramatic,  and  the  lyric. 
But  out  of  this  objective  classification  of  the  varieties  of 
imaginative  exercise,  can  we  derive  the  clue  that  we  seek? 
At  first  sight  not.  If  Thomson  and  Wordsworth  describe 
imaginary  scenes  in  verse,  so  do  Dickens  and  Scott  and  a 
thousand  others  in  prose ;  if  we  have  admirable  delineations 
of  physiognomy  and  costume  in  the  Canterhury  Pilgrimage, 
so  also  have  we  in  the  Waverley  Novels;  if  the  Iliad  is  an 
effort  of  narrative  imagination,  so  also  is  Don  Quixote;  if 
feelings  and  characters  are  represented  in  song  and  the  Iambic 
drama,  so  are  they  also  in  prose  fiction.  And  yet,  as  we 
hinted  at  the  outset,  there  does  seem  to  be  a  condition  sub- 
sisting even  in  the  nature  of  the  objective  matter  imagined, 
when  prose  will  not  generally  contain  and  convey  that  matter. 
What  is  that  condition?  The  instances  cited  at  the  outset 
served  vaguely  to  indicate  it.  In  the  quotation  from  Milton, 
and  in  that  from  ^schylus,  it  was  felt  that  there  was  some- 
thing in  the  actual  matter  of  imaginary  concrete  presented  by 


PROSE   AND   VERSE  :    DE   QUINCE Y.  461 

the  passages,  which  would  have  had  to  be  parted  with,  if  the 
medium  had  been  prose.  Thus,  in  the  first  passage,  it  was  felt 
that  the  image  of  Sabrina 

"  Under  the  glassy,  cool,  translucent  wave, 
In  twisted  braids  of  lilies  knitting 
The  loose  train  of  her  amber-dropping  hair," 

would  make  poor  prose  too  amorous.  Again,  in  the  passage 
from  ^schylus,  it  was  felt  that  the  concrete  description  in 
the  following  sentence  would  have  sustained  some  reduction, 
if  the  composition  had  originally  been  in  prose. 

"  On  his  buckler,  too,  he  had  this  arrogant  device — a  gleaming  sky  tricked 
out  with  stars,  and  in  the  centre  a  brilliant  full  moon  conspicuous  (most  august 
of  the  heavenly  bodies,  the  eye  of  night)." 

Prose  might  have  given  all  of  this  as  far  as  the  parenthesis, 
but  there  it  would  have  stopped. 

So  far  as  we  had  come  to  any  conclusion  from  these 
instances  as  to  the  precise  character  of  that  concrete  which 
prose  instinctively  refuses  to  carry,  and  which  is  yet  welcome 
if  it  is  presented  in  verse,  we  defined  it  as  consisting  in  a 
certain  unusual  degree  of  richness,  or  lusciousness,  or  exqui- 
siteness,  or  arbitrariness,  or  occultness,  or  grandeur,  or  pas- 
sionateness.  We  will  now  limit  the  catalogue  of  qualities 
to  these  two,  richness  and  arbitrariness  ;  and  aver,  as  an 
approximation  to  the  truth,  that  the  character  of  a  concrete 
combination  by  the  imaginative  faculty  pure,  which  deter- 
mines that  it  must  take  place  in  verse,  is  either  an  unusual 
degree  of  richness,  or  an  unusual  degree  of  arbitrariness. 
This  may  not  appear  to  reserve  for  verse  a  sufficient  monopoly 
of  interest  in  the  great  intellectual  function  of  woiricng  ;  but, 
duly  interpreted,  we  believe  it  will  be  found  to  correspond 
with  the  fact.  It  is  not,  we  believe,  the  mere  grandeur  or 
magnificence  of  a  phantasy,  it  is  not  its  mere  fineness  or 
delicacy,  or  exquisiteness,  that  necessarily  renders  prose 
incapable  of  it ;  it  is  solely,  or  all  but  solely,  its  richness,  or 
its  arbitrariness.  The  limits  of  prose  as  regards  the  quality 
of  passionateness,  we  have  already  said  something  about 
under  a  former  head.  What  we  call  an  "  impassioned 
imagination,^'  is  a  mixed    thing,  consisting  of  an  objective 


462  PROSE  AND   VERSE  :   DE   QUINCEY. 

phantasy,  with  a  peculiar  subjective  mood  breathed  through 
it :  it  is  TTotrjo-tc  in  conjunction  with  TraS^aig  ;  and,  having 
ah'eady  considered  when  it  is  that  iraOrjcng  breaks  out  into 
singing,  we  are  only  now  concerned  with  the  distinct  inquiry 
at  what  point,  if  at  any,  Troir^aic:  itself  insists  on  becoming 
metrical. 

In  the  first  place,  then,  there  is  a  peculiar  richness  of  literary 
concrete  of  which  prose  seems  to  be  incapable.  By  richness 
of  concrete,  we  mean  very  much  what  is  meant  by  excess  of 
imagery.  Let  there  be  a  splendid  single  combination  of  tlie 
poetical  faculty — a  splendid  imaginary  scene,  a  splendid 
imaginary  incident  or  action,  a  splendid  imaginary  state  of 
feeling  or  character — and  prose  will  surely  and  easily  com- 
pass it.  The  severe  story  of  a  Greek  drama  may  be  told 
in  outline  in  noble  prose ;  nay,  each  incident  in  such  a  drama 
may  be  rendered  in  a  prose  narrative,  so  as  to  be  impressive 
and  effective.  The  visual  fancy  of  the  blind  Lear  and  his 
guide  on  the  cliff  at  Dover^  or  of  Milton's  Satan  alighting  on 
the  orb  of  the  sun,  and  darkening  it  like  a  telescopic  spot, 
may  also  be  outlined  in  prose,  so  as  finely  to  affect  the 
imagination.  And  so,  universally,  a  single  imagined  circum- 
stance, however  grand,  or  a  moderately  sparse  tissue  of 
imagined  circumstances,  may  be  delivered  in  prose.  But 
when  the  outline  is  thickly  filled  up  with  imagery ;  when,  in 
the  expression  of  the  main  circumstance  already  imagined, 
masses  of  subsidiary  circumstance  are  adduced;  when  the 
stem  of  the  original  poetic  thought  does  not  proceed  straight 
and  shaft-like,  but  is  clustered  over  with  rich  parasitic 
fancies,  then  prose  begins  to  despair.  Thus,  in  Alexander 
Smith's  image  descriptive  of  the  commencement  of  a  friend- 
ship between  one  youth,  the  speaker,  and  another  whom  he 
admired : — 

"  An  opulent  soul 
Dropt  in  my  path  like  a  great  cup  of  gold, 
All  rich  and  rough  with  stories  of  the  gods." 

Here  the  main  fancy,  the  cup  of  gold  dropped  in  the 
youth's  path,  is  perfectly  within  the  compass  of  imaginative 
prose  ;  but  only  a  daring  prose- writer  would  have  turned  the 


I 


PEOSE  AND   VERSE  :    DE  QUINCEY.  463 


cup  SO  lovingly  to  show  its  rich  chasing — or,  as  we  say, 
would  have  so  dallied  with  the  image.  Again,  in  the  fine 
stanza  from  Keats's  Eve  of  St.  Agnes  : — 

"  And  still  she  slept  an  aznre-lidded  sleep, 
In  blanched  linen,  smooth,  and  lavender'd ; 
While  he  from  forth  the  cloaet  brought  a  heap 
Of  candied  apple,  quince,  and  plum,  and  gourd ; 
With  jellies  soother  than  the  creamy  curd. 
And  lucent  syrops,  tinct  with  cinnamon  ; 
Manna  and  dates,  in  argosy  transferred, 
From  Fez ;  and  spiced  dainties,  every  one, 
From  silken  Samarcand  to  cedar'd  Lebanon." 

In  some  very  luscious  prose,  such  as  we  find  in  the  Arabian 
Nights,  we  might  have  had  the  picture  as  elaborately  finished, 
and  even  the  same  express  catalogue  of  dainties ;  but  one  or 
two  of  the  touches  of  subsidiary  circumstance,  as  in  the  first, 
seventh,  and  last  lines,  would  have  been  almost  certainly 
omitted.  Again,  much  more  visibly,  in  the  following  passage 
from  Paradise  Lost,  describing  Satan  defying  Gabriel  and  his 
host  of  warrior-angels. 

**  While  thus  he  spake,  the  angelic  squadron  bright 
Turn'd  fiery  red,  sharpening  in  mooned  horns 
Their  phalanx,  and  began  to  hem  him  round 
With  ported  spears,  as  thick  as  when  a  field 
Of  Cei-es,  ripe  for  harvest,  waving  bends 
Her  bearded  grove  of  ears,  which  way  the  wind 
Sways  them ;  the  careful  ploughman  doubting  stands, 
Lest  on  the  threshing-floor  his  hopeful  sheaves 
Prove  chafiT.     On  the  other  side,  Satan  alarmed, 
Collecting  all  his  might,  dilated  stood. 
Like  Teneriffe,  or  Atlas,  unremoved. 
His  stature  reached  the  sky,  and  on  his  crest 
Sat  horror  plumed." 

Here,  it  is  obvious,  verse  has  left  prose  caught  in  the  thicket. 
The  main  circumstance  could  have  been  represented  in  prose; 
and  prose  might  have  dared  one  or  two  of  the  strokes  of 
subsidiary  imagination ;  but  such  a  profusion  of  simile  and 
metaphor  in  so  short  a  space  would  have  bewildered  and 
encumbered  it.  And  so,  generally,  we  may  consider  it  as 
made  out  that  prose  is  incapable  of  so  rich  a  literary  concrete 
as  verse  may  justly  undertake  ;  and  that,  where  prose  deals 
with  pure  poetic  matter,  a  certain  comparative  thinness  or 
sparseness  is  requisite  in  the  texture  of  that  matter,  however 
bold,  or  fine,  or  grand  may   be    the  separate   imaginations 


464  PROSE   AND   VERSE:    DE   QUINCEY. 

which  compose  it.  Hence  it  is,  we  think,  that  ancient 
classical  poetrj,  and  especially  Greek  epic  and  dramatic 
poetry,  is  more  capable,  as  a  whole,  of  retaining  its  impres- 
siveness  when  translated  into  prose,  than  most  modern  poetry 
when  similarly  treated.  The  ancient  poetry  was  more  severe, 
delighting  in  imaginations  clearly  and  separately  sculptured ; 
the  modern  muse  favours  richness  of  subsidiary  imagery,  and 
delights  in  ornamenting  even  its  largest  creations  with  minute 
tracery. 

Again,  in  the  second  place,  a  certain  degree  of  arhitrariness 
in  an  imaginative  combination  seems  to  place  it  beyond  the 
capacity  of  ordinary  prose.  Our  meaning  will  be  best  seen 
by  an  example  or  two.     When  Shelley  says, 

"  Life,  like  a  dome  of  many-coloured  glass, 
Stains  the  white  radiance  of  eternity ; " 

he  presents  to  the  mind  a  singularly  beautiful  image  or  com- 
bination, which  is  at  once  accepted  and  enjoyed.  Yet  it  is 
a  combination,  so  different  from  anything  likely  to  have 
suggested  itself  to  the  logical  understanding,  or  even  to  the 
imagination  as  swayed  and  directed  by  the  logical  under- 
standing, that  we  question  if  it  could  have  been  arrived  at 
but  for  that  extraordinary  nimbleness  in  seizing  remote 
analogies  which  is  communicated  to  the  mind  when  it  thinks 
under  the  complex  law  of  metre.  A  prose-writer  of  great 
imaginative  power  will  often  strike  out  combinations  of  a 
high  degree  of  arbitrariness,  but  rarely  will  he  feel  himself 
entitled  to  such  an  excursion  into  the  occult  as  the  above. 
So,  also,  in  the  following  passage  from  Keats : — 

"  0  Sorrow  ! 

Why  dost  borrow 
The  natural  hue  of  health  from  vermeil  lips  ? 

To  give  maiden  blushes 

To  the  white-rose  bushes  ? 
Or  is  it  thy  dewy  hand  the  daisy  tips  ? 

0  Sorrow  ! 

Why  dost  borrow 
The  lustrous  passion  from  a  falcon-eye  ? 

To  give  the  glow-worm  light  ? 

Or,  on  a  moonless  night, 
To  tinge,  on  syren  shores,  the  salt  sea-spry  ?" 


I 


PROSE  AND  VEESE:    DE  QUINCEY.  465 


Here,  also,  the  links  of  association  between  idea  and  idea  seem 
to  he  too  occult,  and  the  entire  tissue  of  images  too  arbitrary, 
for  prose  to  have  produced  a  passage  exactly  equivalent ;  and 
yet,  as  it  is  presented  to  us  in  verse,  we  have  no  doubt  as  to 
the  legitimacy  of  the  combination,  and  are  thankful  for  it. 
And  the  reason  again  is,  that  the  mind,  rising  and  falling  on 
the  undulation  of  metre — poised,  so  to  speak,  on  metrical 
wings — is  enabled  to  catch,  as  it  were,  more  fantastic  and 
airy  analogies,  and  to  dart  to  greater  distances  with  less  sense 
of  difficulty,  than  when  pacing  never  so  majestically  on  the 
terra  firma  of  prose.  The  following  from  Tennyson  is  a  fine 
instance  of  the  same : — 


"  The  splendour  falls  on  castle  walls, 
And  snowy  summits  old  in  story ; 
The  long  light  shakes  across  the  lakes, 
And  the  wild  cataract  leaps  in  glory. 
Blow,  bugle,  blow ;  set  the  wild  echoes  flying. 
Answer,  echoes,  answer — dying,  dying,  dying  j" 


a  combination,  the  coherence  of  which  is  felt  by  every 
imaginative  mind,  and  which  possesses  a  singular  represen- 
tative, as  distinct  from  mere  expository  power ;  and  which 
yet  almost  defies  analysis.  Tennyson,  as  one  of  those  poets 
who  have  most  remarkably  restrained  themselves  to  the 
essential  domain  of  verse,  not  caring  to  write  what  prose 
might  have  had  the  power  to  execute,  abounds  with  similar 
instances.  In  Shakespeare,  too,  who  has  by  no  means  so 
restricted  himself,  but  has,  after  his  own  prodigious  fashion, 
torn  up  whole  masses  of  the  rough  prose-world  and  sub- 
mitted them,  as  well  as  the  finer  matter  of  poetic  phantasy,  to 
the  all-crushing  power  of  his  verse,  we  find  examples  of  the 
same  hardly  paralleled  in  the  rest  of  literature.  Thus,  ad 
aperturam, — 

"  Thou  remember'st 
Since  once  I  sat  upon  a  promontory. 
And  heard  a  mermaid  on  a  dolphin's  back, 
Uttering  such  dulcet  and  harmonious  breath, 
That  the  rude  sea  grew  civil  at  her  song, 
And  certain  stars  shot  madly  from  their  spheres, 
To  hear  the  sea-maid's  music." 

H  H 


466  PEOSE  AND  VEKSE:   DE   QUINCEY. 

Again : — 

"  Sit,  Jessica ;  look  how  the  floor  of  heaven 
Is  thick  inlaid  with  patinas  of  bright  gold. 
There's  not  the  smallest  orb  that  thou  behold'st 
But  in  his  motion  like  an  angel  sings, 
Still  quiring  to  the  young-eyed  cherubims." 

We  will  close  this  series  of  examples  with  a  very  apt  one 
from  Milton,  describing  the  loathsome  appearance  of  Sin  and 
her  brood  at  the  gates  of  hell. 

"  Far  less  abhorred  than  these 
Vexed  Scylla,  bathing  in  the  sea  that  parts 
Calabria  from  the  hoarse  Trinacrian  shore ; 
Nor  uglier  follow  the  night-hag,  when,  called 
In  secret,  riding  through  the  air  she  comes, 
Lured  with  the  smell  of  infant  blood,  to  dance 
With  Lapland  witches,  while  the  labouring  moon 
Eclipses  at  their  charms." 

All  these  examples  seem  to  make  it  clear  that  there  belongs 
to  verse  a  certain  extreme  arbitrariness  of  imaginative 
association,  sometimes  taking  the  character  of  mere  light 
extravagance  of  whimsy,  sometimes  leading  to  a  ghastly 
and  unearthly  effect,  and  often  surprising  the  mind  with 
unexpected  gleams  of  beauty  and  grandeur.  For,  though  we 
have  already  maintained  for  prose  the  capability  of  pure  gran- 
deur and  sublimity  in  imaginative  effects,  we  must  note  here, 
as  in  the  interest  of  verse,  that  one  source  of  grandeur  is  this 
very  licence  of  most  arbitrary  combination  which  verse  gives. 
Some  light  might,  perhaps,  be  cast  on  this  whole  question 
of  the  relative  and  essential  capabilities  of  verse  and  prose, 
by  a  study  of  the  law  of  Shakespeare's  incessant  instinctive 
shiftings  in  his  dramas  between  the  two  modes  of  writing. 
In  such  a  study  it  would  require  to  be  premised  that,  as 
Shakespeare  stands,  by  birthright  and  choice,  on  the  verse 
side  of  the  river,  and  only  makes  occasional  excursions  to  the 
prose  side,  it  is  to  be  expected  that  his  practice  will  indicate 
rather  the  range  within  which  prose  has  the  sole  title,  than 
the  extent  of  ground  over  which  it  may  expatiate  as  joint- 
proprietor.  Forbearing  for  the  present,  however,  any  such 
interesting  inquiry,  let  us  be  content  with  the  approximate 


I     conclusions 


PROSE   AND   VERSE:    DE   QUINCEY.  467 


conclusions  to  which  we  have  independently  come.  These 
may  be  recapitulated  as  follows: — That  in  the  whole  vast 
field  of  the  speculative  and  didactic — a  field  in  which  the 
soul  of  man  may  win  triumphs  no  wise  inferior,  let  illiterate 
poetasters  babble  as  they  will,  to  those  of  the  mightiest  sons 
of  song — prose  is  the  legitimate  monarch,  receiving  verse  but 
as  a  visitor  and  guest  who  will  carry  back  bits  of  rich  ore 
and  other  specimens  of  the  land's  produce ;  that  in  the  great 
business  of  record,  also,  prose  is  pre-eminent,  verse  but 
voluntarily  assisting ;  that  in  the  expression  of  passion,  and 
the  work  of  moral  stimulation,  verse  and  prose  meet  as 
co-equals,  prose  undertaking  the  rougher  and  harder  duty 
where  passion  intermingles  with  the  storm  of  current  doctrine, 
and  with  the  play  and  conflict  of  social  interests — sometimes, 
when  thus  engaged,  bursting  forth  into  such  strains  of  irre- 
gular music  that  verse  takes  up  the  echo,  and  prolongs  it  in 
measured  modulation,  leaving  prose  rapt  and  listening  to  hear 
itself  outdone ;  and,  lastly,  that  in  the  noble  realm  of  poetry 
or  imagination,  prose  also  is  capable  of  all  exquisite,  beau- 
tiful, powerful,  and  magnificent  effects,  but  that,  by  reason 
of  a  gTcater  ease  with  fancies  when  they  come  in  crowds, 
and  of  a  greater  range  and  arbitrariness  of  combination, 
verse  here  moves  with  the  more  royal  gait.  And  thus  prose 
and  verse  are  presented  as  two  circles  or  spheres  not  entirely 
separate,  as  some  would  make  them,  but  intersecting  and 
interpenetrating  through  a  large  portion  of  both  their  bulks, 
and  disconnected  only  in  two  crescents  outstanding  at  the 
right  and  left,  or,  if  you  adjust  them  differently,  at  the  upper 
and  lower  extremities.  The  left  or  lower  crescent,  the 
peculiar  and  sole  region  of  prose,  is  where  we  labour  amid 
the  sheer  didactic  or  the  didactic  combined  with  the  practical 
and  the  stern;  the  right  or  upper  crescent,  the  peculiar  and 
sole  region  of  verse,  is  where  7ra9r}ai^  at  its  utmost  thrill  and 
ecstasy  interblends  with  the  highest  and  most  daring  iroirjmg. 
Now,  what  Mr.  De  Quincey,  in  his  clear  and  modest  self- 
appreciation,  claims  as  one  of  his  titles  to  a  place  in  English 
literature,  if  not  as  his  most  valued  title,  is,  that,  being 
expressly  a  prose  writer,  he  has  yet,  as  a  prose  writer,  pushed 

H  h2 


468  PROSE    AND   VERSE  :    DE  QUINCEY. 

farther  into  the  peculiar  and  established  domain  of  verse,  as 
we  have  just  defined  it,  than  almost  any  other  prose  writer 
in  the  language.  In  the  passage  we  quoted  from  him  at  the 
beginning  of  the  article,  he  represents  himself  as  almost  a 
unique  practitioner  in  at  least  one  department  of  high  impas- 
sioned and  imaginative  prose — that  which  partakes  of  the 
character  of  personal  confessions.  In  universal  literature  he 
can  refer  but  to  one  passage,  in  the  Confessions  of  St.  Augus- 
tine, as  coming  under  the  same  literary  precedents  as  parts 
of  his  own  Oj)ium  Eater  and  of  his  Suspiria  de  Profundis. 
This  is  likely  to  be  true,  if  Mr.  De  Quincey  says  it ;  Wt  it 
is  well  to  bear  in  mind  (the  more  especially  as  there  is  a 
certain  grammatical  ambiguity  in  Mr.  De  Quincey' s  expres- 
sion— "  the  utter  sterility  of  universal  literature  in  this  one 
department  of  impassioned  prose," — which  might  lead  to  a 
misunderstanding  of  Mr.  De  Quincey's  meaning),  that  if  there 
has  not  been  much  of  impassioned  prose-writing  of  this  one 
species,  the  literature  of  all  languages  contains  noble  speci- 
mens of  impassioned  and  imaginative  prose  of  one  kind  or 
another.  To  name  the  first  example  that  occurs  to  us, 
Milton's  prose  works  contain  passages  of  such  grandeur  as 
almost  to  rival  his  poetry.  Let  the  following  stand  as  a 
specimen:  it  is  the  concluding  passage  of  his  treatise  on 
the  Causes  that  have  hindered  the  Reformation  in  England, 
written  in  the  form  of  an  epistle  to  a  friend. 

"  Oh  !  Sir,  I  do  now  feel  myself  inwrapt  on  the  sudden  into  those  mazes 
and  labyrinths  of  dreadful  and  hideous  thoughts,  that  which  way  to  get  out, 
or  which  way  to  end,  I  know  not ;  unless  I  turn  mine  eyes,  and  with  your 
help,  lift  up  my  hands  to  that  eternal  and  propitious  throne,  where  nothing  is 
readier  than  grace  and  refuge  to  the  distresses  of  mortal  suppliants,  and  as  it 
were  a  shame  to  leave  those  serious  thoughts  less  piously  than  the  heathen 
were  wont  to  conclude  their  graver  discourses, 

"  Thou,  therefore,  that  sitst  in  light  and  glory  unapproachable,  Parent  of 
angels  and  men  !  next,  thee  I  implore.  Omnipotent  King,  Redeemer  of  that 
lost  remnant  whose  nature  thou  didst  assume.  Ineffable  and  Everlasting 
Love !  and  thou,  the  third  subsistence  of  Divine  Infinitude,  Ilkimining 
Spirit,  the  joy  and  solace  of  created  things  ! — one  tri-personed  Godhead  !  look 
upon  this  thy  poor  and  almost  spent  and  expiring  Church ;  leave  her  not  thus 
a  prey  to  these  importunate  wolves,  that  wait  and  think  long  till  they  devoiir 
thy  tender  flock — these  wUd  boars  that  have  broke  into  thy  vineyard,  and  left 
the  print  of  their  polluting  hoofs  on  the  souls  of  thy  servants.  Oh  !  let  them 
not  bring  about  their  damned  designs  that  now  stand  at  the  entrance  of  the 
bottomless  pit,  expecting  the  watchward  to  open  and  let  out  those  di'eadfid 
locusts  and  scorpions  to  rein  vol  ve  us  in  that  pitchy  cloud  of  infernal  darkness, 
where  we  shall  never  more  see  the  sun  of  thy  truth  again,  never  hope  for  the     ^ 


PROSE  AND  VERSE  :  DE  QUINCEY.  469 

cheerful  dawn,  never  more  hear  the  bird  of  morning  sing.  Be  moved  with 
l)ity  at  the  afflicted  state  of  this  onr  shaken  monarchy,  that  now  lies  labouring 
under  her  throes,  and  struggling  against  the  grudges  of  more  dreaded  cala- 
mities. 

"  Oh  !  Thou,  that  after  the  impetuous  rage  of  five  bloody  inundations  and 
the  succeeding  sword  of  intestine  war,  soaking  the  land  in  her  own  gore, 
didst  pity  the  sad  and  ceaseless  revolution  of  our  swift  and  thick-coming 
sorrows — when  we  were  quite  breathless,  didst  motion  peace  and  terms  of 
covenant  with  us,  and  having  first  well-nigh  freed  us  from  anti-Christian 
thraldom,  didst  build  up  this  Britannic  empire  to  a  glorious  and  epviable 
height,  with  all  her  daughter  islands  about  her — stay  us  in  this  felicity  ;  let 
not  the  obstinacy  of  our  half-obedience  and  will-worship  bring  forth  that 
viper  of  sedition  that  for  these  fourscore  years  has  been  breeding  to  eat 
through  the  entrails  of  our  peace;  but  let  her  cast  her  abortive  spawn 
without  the  danger  of  this  travailing  and  throbbing  kingdom,  that  we  may 
still  remember,  in  our  solemn  thanksgivings,  how  for  us  the  northern  ocean, 
even  to  the  frozen  Thule,  was  scattered  with  the  proud  shipwrecks  of  the 
Spanish  Armada,  and  the  very  maw  of  hell  ransacked,  and  made  to  give  up 
her  concealed  destruction,  ere  she  could  vent  it  in  that  horrible  and  damned 
blast. 

"  Oh,  how  much  more  glorious  will  those  former  deliverances  appear,  when 
we  shall  know  them  not  only  to  have  saved  us  from  greatest  miseries  past, 
but  to  have  reserved  us  for  gi-eatest  happiness  to  come  !  Hitherto  Thou  hast 
but  freed  us,  and  that  not  fully,  from  the  unjust  and  tyrannous  chain  of  thy 
foes ;  now  unite  us  entirely,  and  appropriate  lis  to  Thyself ;  tie  us  ever- 
lastingly in  willing  homage  to  the  prerogative  of  thy  Eternal  throne. 

"And  now  we  £iow,  0  Thou,  our  most  certain  hope  and  defence,  that  thine 
enemies  have  been  consulting  all  the  sorceries  of  the  great  whore,  and  have 
joined  their  plots  with  that  sad  intelligencing  tyrant  that  mischiefs  the  world 
with  his  mines  of  Ophir,  and  lies  thirsting  to  revenge  his  naval  ruins  that 
have  larded  our  seas  :  but  let  them  all  take  counsel  together,  and  let  it  come 
to  nought ;  let  them  decree  and  do  thou  cancel  it ;  let  them  gather  themselves 
and  be  scattered ;  let  them  embattle  themselves  and  be  broken ;  let  them 
embattle  and  be  broken,  for  thou  art  with  us, 

"  Then,  amidst  the  hymns  and  hallelujahs  of  saints,  some  one  may  perhaps 
be  heard  offering  at  high  strains,  in  new  and  lofty  measures,  to  sing  and 
celebrate  thy  divine  mercies  and  marvellous  judgments  in  this  land  throughout 
all  ages ;  whereby  this  great  and  warlike  nation,  instructed  and  inured  to  the 
fervent  and  continual  practice  of  truth  and  righteousness,  and  casting  far 
from  her  the  rags  of  her  old  vices,  may  press  on  hard  to  that  high  and  happy 
emulation,  to  be  found  the  soberest,  wisest,  and  most  Christian  people,  at 
that  day,  when  Thoti,  the  Eternal  and  shortly-expected  King,  shalt  open  the 
clouds  to  judge  the  several  kingdoms  of  the  world,  and,  distributing  national 
honours  and  rewards  to  religious  and  just  commonwealths,  shalt  put  an  end 
to  all  earthly  tyrannies,  proclaiming  the  universal  and  mild  monarchy  throiigh 
heaven  and  earth.  Where  they  undoubtedly,  that  by  their  labours,  counsels, 
and  prayers,  have  been  earnest  for  the  common  good  of  religion  and  their 
country,  shall  receive,  above  the  inferior  order  of  the  blessed,  the  regal 
addition  of  principalities,  legions,  and  thrones,  under  their  glorious  titles,  and, 
in  supereminence  of  beatific  vision,  progressing  the  dateless  and  iiTCvoluble 
circle  of  eternity,  shall  clasp  inseparable  hands  with  joy  and  bliss,  in  over 
measure  for  ever.  But  they,  contrary,  that  by  the  impairing  and  diminution 
of  the  true  faith,  the  distresses  and  servitude  of  their  country,  asfure  to  high 
dignity,  rtile,  and  promotion  here,  after  a  shameful  end  in  this  life  (which  God 
grant  them  !)  shall  be  thrown  down  eternally  into  the  darkest  and  deepest 
gulf  of  hell,  where,  under  the  despiteful  control,  the  trample  and  the  spurn  of 
all  the  other  damned,  that  in  the  anguish  of  their  tortures,  shall  have  no 
other  ease  than  to  exercise  a  raving  and  bestial  tyranny  over  them,  as  their 
slaves  and  negroes,  they  shall  remain  in  that  plight  for  ever,  the  basest,  the 
lowermost,  the  most  dejected,  most  underfoot  and  down-trodden  vassals  of 
perdition." 


470  PKOSE   AND   VERSE  :    DE  QUINCEY. 

This  may  pass  as  a  specimen  of  imjpassioned  prose  hardly 
to  be  matched  in  the  English  language.  For  specimens  of 
what  may  more  properly  be  called  imaginative  prose,  we 
might  refer  also  to  English  writers,  and  to  some  English 
writers  now  living.  But  in  this  connexion  it  is  perhaps  fairest 
to  name  that  foreign  writer,  who,  by  the  general  consent  of 
literary  Europe,  is  accounted  facile  princess  among  all  prose 
invaders  of  the  peculiar  dominion  of  verse — the  German, 
Jean  Paul.  All  who  are  acquainted  with  the  writings  of 
Jean  Paul,  must  be  aware  that,  whatever  is  to  be  said  of  his 
genius  as  a  whole,  or  in  comparison  with  that  of  his  com- 
patriot Goethe,  in  the  single  faculty  of  wild  and  rich  prose- 
poesy  he  is  the  most  astonishing  even  of  German  writers. 
Passages  verifying  this  might  be  quoted  in  scores  from  his 
fictions.  The  famous  dream  of  Christ  and  the  Universe  is 
perhaps  the  grandest  and  most  daring  phantasy  of  the  kind  in 
literature ;  and,  had  we  space,  we  should  quote  it.  We  will 
quote,  instead,  a  shorter  and  less  awful  passage — the  singularly 
beautiful  conclusion  of  the  novel  of  Quintus  Fixlein,  describing 
the  solitary  walk  homewards  of  a  man  who  has  just  left  two 
dear  friends. 

"  "We  were  all  of  us  too  deeply  moved.  We  at  last  tore  ourselves  asunder 
from  repeated  embraces ;  my  friend  retired  with  the  soul  whom  he  loves. 
I  remained  alone  behind  him  with  the  night. 

"  And  I  walked  without  aim  through  woods,  through  valleys,  and  over 
brooks,  and  through  sleeping  villages,  to  enjoy  the  great  Night  like  a  Day. 
I  walked,  and  still  looked,  like  the  magnet,  to  the  region  of  midnight,  to 
strengthen  my  heart  at  the  gleaming  twilight,  at  this  upstretching  aurora  of  a 
morning  beneath  our  feet.  While  night  butterflies  flitted,  white  blossoms 
fluttered,  white  stai's  fell,  and  the  white  snow-powder  hung  silvery  in  the  high 
shadow  of  the  Earth,  which  reaches  beyond  the  Moon,  and  which  is  our  Night. 
Then  began  the  JEolian  hai'p  of  creation  to  tremble  and  to  sound,  blown  on 
from  above  ;  and  my  immortal  soul  was  a  string  in  this  harp.  The  heart  of  a 
brother,  everlasting  Man,  swelled  under  the  everlasting  Heaven,  as  the  seas 
swell  under  the  sun  and  under  the  moon.  The  distant  village  clocks  struck 
midnight,  mingling,  as  it  were,  with  the  ever-pealing  tone  of  ancient  Eternity, 
The  limbs  of  my  buried  ones  touched  cold  on  my  soul,  and  drove  away  its 
blots,  as  dead  hands  heal  eruptions  of  the  skin  I  walked  silently  through 
little  hamlets,  and  close  by  their  outer  churchyards,  where  crumbled  upcast 
coffin-boards  were  glimmering,  while  the  once-bright  eyes  that  had  lain  in 
them  were  mouldered  into  grey  ashes.  Cold  thought !  clutch  not  like  a  cold 
spectre  at  my  heart :  I  look  up  to  the  starry  sky,  and  an  everlasting  chain 
stretches  thither,  and  over,  and  below ;  and  all  is  life,  and  warmth,  and  light, 
and  all  is  Godlike  or  God. 

"  Towards  morning  I  descried  thy  late  lights,  little  city  of  my  dwelling, 
\vhich  I  belong  to  on  this  side  the  grave ;  I  returned  to  the  earth ;  and  in  the 
steeples,  behind  the  by-advanced  great  midnight,  it  struck  half-past  two. 
About   this   hour,  in  1794,  Mars  went  down    in   the  west,   aad   the    moon 


PROSE   AND   VEESE  :    DE   QUINCEY.  471 

rose  in  the  east ;  and  my  soul  desired,  in  grief  for  the  noble  wai'like  blood 
which  is  still  streaming  on  the  blossoms  of  spring  :  '  Ah,  retire,  bloody  "War- 
like red  Mars ;  and  thou,  still  Peace,  come  forth,  like  the  mild  divided  moon." 
— Mr.  Cablyle's  Translation. 

Even  after  sucli  a  passage  as  this,  there  are  passages  in 
Mr.  De  Quincey's  writings,  whose  power  as  specimens  of 
impassioned  and  imaginative  prose  would  be  felt  as  something 
new.  His  Confessions,  his  Suspiria  de  Profundis,  and  even 
his  present  volumes  of  AutohiograpMc  Sketches,  contain  pas- 
sages which,  for  weird  and  sublime  beauty,  and  for  power  of 
embodying  the  impalpable  and  the  visionary,  are  not  sur- 
passed anywhere  in  poetry.  Take  the  following  as  an 
example :  it  is  an  attempt  to  impersonate  and  generalize  in 
distinct  living  shapes  those  various  forms  or  powers  of  sorrow 
that  hold  dominion  over  man  and  human  life.  As  there  are 
three  Graces,  three  Fates,  and  three  Furies,  so,,  says  De 
Quincey,  there  are  three  Ladies  of  Sorrow  : — 

"the  three  ladies  of  sorrow. 

"  The  eldest  of  the  three  is  named  Mater  Lachrymarum,  our  Lady  of  Tears. 
She  it  is  that  night  and  day  raves  and  moans,  calling  for  vanished  faces.  She 
stood  in  Rama,  when  a  voice  was  heard  of  lamentation — '  Rachel  weeping  for 
her  children  and  refusing  to  be  comforted.'  She  it  was  that  stood  in  Bethlehem 
on  the  night  when  Herod's  sword  swept  its  nurseries  of  innocents,  and  the 
little  feet  were  stiffened  for  ever,  which,  heard  at  times  as  they  tottered  along 
floors  overhead,  woke  pulses  of  love  in  household  hearts  that  were  not  un- 
marked in  heaven.  Her  eyes  are  sweet  and  subtle,  wild  and  sleepy  by  turns ; 
oftentimes  rising  to  the  clouds ;  oftentimes  challenging  the  heavens.  She  wears 
a  diadem  round  her  head.  And  I  knew  by  childish  memories  that  she  could 
go  abroad  upon  the  winds,  when  she  heard  the  sobbing  of  litanies  or  the 
thundering  of  organs,  and  when  she  beheld  the  mustering  of  summer  clouds. 
This  sister,  the  elder,  it  is  that  carries  keys  more  than  Papal  at  her  girdle, 
which  open  every  cottage  and  every  palace.  She,  to  my  knowledge,  sate  all 
last  summer  by  the  bedside  of  the  blind  beggar,  him  that  so  often  and  so  gladly 
I  talked  with,  whose  pious  daughter,  eight  years  old,  with  the  sunny  counte- 
nance, resisted  the  temptations  of  play  and  village  mirth  to  travel  all  day  long 
on  dusty  roads  with  her  afflicted  father.  For  this  did  God  send  her  a  gi-eat 
reward.  In  the  spring-time  of  the  year,  and  whilst  yet  her  own  spring  was 
budding,  he  took  her  to  Himself.  But  her  blind  father  Inoums  for  ever  over 
her  ;  still  he  dreams  at  midnight  that  the  little  guiding  hand  is  locked  within 
his  own ;  and  still  he  wakens  to  a  darkness  that  is  now  within  a  second  and  a 
deeper  darkness.  This  Mater  Lachryraarum  also  has  been  sitting  all  this  winter 
of  1844-45  within  the  bedchamber  of  the  Czar,  bringing  before  his  eyes  a 
daughter  (not  less  pious)  that  vanished  to  God  not  less  suddenly,  and  left 
behind  her  a  darkness  not  less  profound.  By  the  power  of  her  keys  it  is  that 
Our  Lady  of  Tears  glides,  a  ghostly  intruder,  into  the  chamber  of  sleepless 
men,  sleepless  women,  sleepless  children,  from  Ganges  to  the  Nile,  from  Nile 
to  Mississippi ;  and  her,  because  she  is  the  first-bom  of  her  house,  and  has  the 
widest  empire,  let  us  honour  with  the  title  of  '  Madonna.' 

"  The  second  sister  is  called  Mater  Suspirionim,  Our  Lady  of  Sighs.  She 
neither  scales  the  clouds,  nor  walks  abroad  upon  the  winds.     She  wears  no 


472  PROSE   AND  VERSE  :    DE   QUINCEY. 

diadem.  And  her  eyes,  if  they  were  ever  seen,  would  be  neither  sweet  nor 
subtle ;  no  man  could  read  their  story ;  they  would  be  found  filled  with  perish- 
ing dreams  and  with  wrecks  of  forgotten  delirium.  But  she  raises  not  her  eyes; 
her  head,  on  which  sits  a  dilapidated  turban,  droops  for  ever — for  ever  fastens 
on  the  dust.  She  weeps  not.  She  groans  not.  But  she  sighs  inaudibly  at 
intervals.  Her  sister.  Madonna,  is  oftentimes  stormy  and  frantic — raging  in 
the  highest  against  heaven,  and  demanding  back  her  darlings.  But  Our  Lady 
of  Sighs  never  clamours,  never  defies,  dreams  not  of  rebellious  aspirations.  She 
is  humble  to  abjectness.  Hers  is  the  meekness  that  belongs  to  the  hopeless. 
Murmur  she  may,  but  it  is  in  her  sleep.  Whisper  she  may,  but  it  is  to  herself 
in  the  twilight.  Mutter  she  does  at  times,  but  it  is  in  solitary  places  that  are 
desolate  as  she  is  desolate,  in  ruined  cities,  and  when  the  sun  has  gone  down  to 
rest.  This  sister  is  the  visitor  of  the  Pariah,  of  the  Jew,  of  the  bondsman  to 
the  oar  in  Mediterranean  galleys,  of  the  English  criminal  in  Norfolk  Island, 
blotted  out  from  remembrance  in  sweet  far-oflF  England,  of  the  bafiled  penitent 
reverting  his  eye  for  ever  upon  a  solitary  grave,  which  to  him  seems  the  altar 
overthrown  of  some  past  and  bloody  sacrifice,  on  which  altar  no  oblations  can 
now  be  availing,  whether  towards  pardon  that  he  might  implore,  or  towards 
reparation  that  he  might  attempt.  Every  slave  that  at  noonday  looks  up  to 
the  tropical  sun  with  timid  reproach,  as  he  points  with  one  hand  to  the  earth 
our  general  mother,  but  for  Mm  a  stepmother,  as  he  points  with  the  other  hand 
to  the  Bible  our  general  teacher,  but  against  him  sealed  and  sequestered ; — 
every  woman  sitting  in  darkness,  without  love  to  shelter  her  head,  or  hope  to 
illume  her  solitude,  because  the  heaven-bom  instincts  kindling  in  her  nature 
germs  of  holy  affections,  which  God  implanted  in  her  womanly  bosom,  having 
been  stifled  by  social  necessities,  now  bum  sullenly  to  waste,  like  sepulchral 
lamps  among  the  ancients ; — every  nun  defrauded  of  her  unretuming  May-time 
by  wicked  kinsmen,  whom  God  will  judge ; — every  captive  in  every  dungeon ; — 
all  that  are  betrayed,  and  all  that  are  rejected,  outcasts  by  traditionary  law,  and 
children  of  hereditary  disgrace — all  these  walk  with  '  Our  Lady  of  Sighs.'  She 
also  carries  a  key ;  but  she  needs  it  little.  For  her  kingdom  is  chiefly  among 
the  tents  of  shame,  and  the  houseless  vagrant  of  every  clime.  Yet  in  the  very 
highest  ranks  of  men  she  finds  chapels  of  her  own ;  and  even  in  glorious  Eng- 
land there  are  some  that,  to  the  world,  carry  their  heads  as  proudly  as  the 
reindeer,  who  yet  secretly  have  received  her  mark  upon  theii*  foreheads. 

"  But  the  third  sister,  who  is  also  the  yoimgest —  !  Hush  !  whisper,  whilst  we 
talk  of  her  I  Her  kingdom  is  not  large,  or  else  no  flesh  should  live ;  but  within 
that  kingdom  all  power  is  hers.  Her  head,  turreted  like  that  of  Cybele,  rises 
almost  beyond  the  reach  of  night.  She  droops  not ;  and  her  eyes,  rising  so  high, 
might  b§  hidden  by  distance.  But,  being  what  they  are,  they  cannot  be  hidden; 
through  the  treble  veil  of  crape  which  she  wears,  the  fierce  light  of  a  blazing 
misery,  that  rests  not  for  matins  or  for  vespers — for  noon  of  day,  or  noon  of 
night — for  ebbing  or  for  flowing  tide — may  be  read  from  the  very  ground. 
She  is  the  defier  of  God.  She  is  also  the  mother  of  lunacies,  and  the  suggestress 
of  suicides.  Deep  lie  the  roots  of  her  power ;  but  narrow  is  the  nation  that  she 
rules.  For  she  can  approach  only  those  in  whom  a  profound  nature  has  been 
upheaved  by  central  convulsions ;  in  whom  the  heart  trembles  and  the  brain 
rocks  under  conspiracies  of  tempest  from  without  and  tempest  from  within. 
Madonna  moves  with  uncertain  steps,  fast  or  slow,  but  still  with  tragic  grace. 
Our  Lady  of  Sighs  creeps  timidly  and  stealthily.  But  this  youngest  sister  moves 
with  incalcvdable  motions,  bounding,  and  with  tiger's  leaps.  She  carries  no  key; 
for,  though  coming  rarely  amongst  men,  she  storms  all  doors  at  which  she  is 
permitted  to  enter  at  all.  And  her  name  is  Mater  Tenebrarum,  Our  Lady  of 
Darkness," 

In  this  noble  piece  of  prose,  as  in  the  passages  from  Milton 
and  Eichter,  no  one  can  fail  to  remark,  in  exact  accordance 
with  what  we  have  advanced  in  the  course  of  this  article,  that    \ 


PROSE  AND   VEESE  :    DE   QUINCE Y.  473 

precisely  as  the  passion  gains  in  force  and  intensity,  and  the 
pure  process  of  poetic  combination  transacts  itself  with  ease 
and  vigour,  the  language  acquires  and  sustains  a  more  decided 
metrical  cadence.  It  would  not  be  difficult  to  arrange  parts  of 
the  passages  so  that  what  has  been  printed  as  prose  should 
present  to  the  eye  the  appearance  of  irregular  verse.  And  so 
generally,  a  peculiar  rhythm  or  music  will  always  be  found  in 
highly  impassioned  or  imaginative  prose.  The  voice  swells 
with  its  burthen ;  the  hand  rises  and  falls ;  and  the  foot  beats 
time.  And  thus,  as  we  have  more  than  once  said,  prose  passes 
into  verse  by  visible  gradations.  Still,  there  is  a  clear  line  of 
separation  between  the  most  metrical  prose,  and  what  is  con- 
ventionally recognised  as  verse ;  and  with  all  the  great  effects 
that  may  be  produced  on  this  side  of  the  line  of  separation, 
Prose,  as  such,  is  entitled  to  be  credited.  And  why  should 
not  prose  do  its  utmost  ?  Why  should  we  not  have  more  men 
like  Richter  and  De  Quincey  to  teach  prose  its  uses  and 
capabilities?  "  The  muse  of  prose-literature,"  we  have  ven- 
tured to  say  on  another  occasion,  "  has  been  very  hardly 
dealt  with.  We  see  not  why,  in  prose,  there  should  not  be 
much  of  that  mighty  licence  in  the  fantastic,  that  measured 
riot,  that  right  of  whimsy,  that  unabashed  dalliance  with  the 
extreme  and  the  beautiful,  which  the  world  allows,  by  pre- 
scription, to  verse.  Why  may  not  one  in  prose  chase  forest- 
nymphs,  and  see  little  green-eyed  elves,  and  delight  in  peonies 
and  musk-roses,  and  invoke  the  stars  and  roll  mists  about  the 
hills,  and  watch  the  seas  thundering  through  caverns,  and 
dashing  against  the  promontories  ?  Why,  in  prose,  quail  from 
the  grand  or  ghastly  on  the  one  hand,  or  blush  with  shame 
at  too  much  of  the  exquisite  on  the  other  ?  Is  prose  made  of 
iron?  Must  it  never  weep — must  it  never  laugh;  never 
linger  to  look  at  a  buttercup,  never  ride  at  a  gallop  over  the 
downs?  Always  at  a  steady  trot,  transacting  only  such 
business  as  may  be  done  within  the  limits  of  a  soft  sigh  on 
the  one  hand,  and  a  thin  smile  on  the  other,  must  it  leave  all 
finer  and  higher  work  of  imagination  to  the  care  of  sister 
verse?"  All  speed,  then,  to  the  prose  invasion  of  the  peculiar 
realm  of  verse;  and  the  farther  the  conquest  can  proceed, 


474         PKOSE  AND  YEESE  :  DE  QUINCET. 

perhaps  the  better  in  the  end  for  both  parties.  The  time  is 
perhaps  coming  when  the  best  prose  shall  be  more  like  verse 
than  it  now  is,  and  the  best  verse  shall  not  disdain  a  certain 
resemblance  to  prose. 

A  word  in  conclusion,  to  prevent  misconception.  We  have 
tried  to  define  the  special  and  peculiar  domain  of  verse ;  but  we 
have  scrupulously  avoided  saying  anything  that  would  imply 
an  opinion  that  verse  may  not,  both  lawfally  and  with  good 
effect,  go  beyond  that  domain.  We  have  all  along  supposed 
the  contrary.  Verse,  merely  as  a  form  of  expression,  has 
charms  of  its  own.  A  thought,  or  an  incident,  or  a  feeling, 
which  may  be  perfectly  well  expressed  in  prose,  may  be 
rendered  more  pleasing,  more  impressive,  and  more  memorable, 
by  being  expressed  in  metre  or  rhyme.  If  a  man  has  some 
doctrine  or  theory  which  he  wishes  to  expound,  there  is  no 
reason,  if  he  finds  it  possible,  and  chooses  to  take  the  trouble, 
why  he  should  not  make  the  exposition  a  metrical  one  ;  and, 
if  his  verses  are  good,  there  is  every  probability  that,  on 
account  of  the  public  relish  for  metre  in  itself,  his  exposition 
will  take  a  more  secure  place  in  literature  than  would  have 
been  attained  by  a  corresponding  piece  of  didactic  prose.  So 
also  a  witticism,  or  a  description,  or  a  plain,  homely  story, 
may  often  be  delivered  more  neatly,  tersely,  and  delightfully, 
if  it  comes  in  the  garb  of  verse.  In  the  same  way,  a  man  may 
impress  more  powerfully  some  strongly-felt  sentiment,  by 
throwing  it  into  a  series  of  nervous  and  hearty  lines.  In  short, 
we  ought  to  be  ready  to  accept  wit  in  metre,  or  narrative  in 
metre,  or  politics  in  metre,  or  anything  else  in  metre,  when 
we  can  get  it ;  and  we  ought,  in  every  such  case,  to  allow  all 
that  additional  credit  to  the  author  which  is  due  to  his  skill  in 
so  delightful  an  art  as  versification.  Much  of  the  poetry  of 
Horace,  all  the  satires  of  Juvenal,  the  Hudibras  of  Butler, 
Pope's  metrical  essays,  and  many  other  compositions  of 
tolerably  diverse  kinds,  may  be  cited  as  examples  of  that 
order  of  poetry  which  consists  of  shrewdness,  wit,  manly 
feeling,  and  general  intellectual  vigour  manifesting  themselves 
in  metre.  Who  does  not  admire  the  exquisite  literary  felicity 
displayed  in  such  works,  and  who,  having  them  in  his  mind, 


PROSE  AND  VEESE  :  DE  QUINCEY.         475 

can  remain  insensible  to  the  claims  of  verse,  to  range  at  large 
wherever  it  chooses  to  go?  Wliat  we  wish  to  make  clear, 
however,  is,  that  a  distinction  may  and  must  be  drawn 
between  verse  considered  as  an  essential  condition  of  a  peculiar 
kind  of  thought,  and  verse  considered  as  an  optional  form  of 
expression,  which  may  be  chosen,  in  almost  any  case,  for  the 
sake  of  its  fine  and  elegant  effects.  The  fact  that  verse 
may  be  regarded  in  this  latter  aspect  is,  we  think,  the  sole 
justification  of  nine-tenths  of  what  is  called  poetry  in  all 
languages. 


THE    END. 


K.    CLAY,    PEINTtK,  BREAD   STEEET  HILL. 


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